The Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, was marked in Cape Town, South Africa's legislative capital, where the city's Chinese and local communities came together for a day of festivities at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, one of Cape Town's landmarks.
As part of the celebration, the local and Chinese communities showcased their talents in arts and crafts at a day-long market. The festivities featured a range of activities, including fan-making, Chinese character calligraphy, and traditional food, offering visitors a vibrant taste of Spring Festival traditions.
One of the highlights of the celebration was a lively quiz competition, where members of the local communities tested their skills by speaking simple Mandarin phrases and answering challenging questions about Chinese culture. Winners walked away with prizes, adding an interactive edge to the festivities.
"So what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring the real atmosphere of celebration of the Chinese New Year to the people of Cape Town, and even to a large extent, to the people of South Africa. Gradually, more and more people fall in love with Chinese culture. [This is] especially also [evident] at different universities, where you see students start learning Chinese, speak Mandarin, and they learn to write in Chinese, especially Chinese calligraphy," said Dong Gang, director of the Cape Town Huaxing Arts Troupe.
"This year marks our fourth year. We have been holding the Cape Town Chinese New Year event for four years. Many friends in China say that the Cape Town Chinese New Year event is more festive than events back home. We think we've done a really good job. So we're very happy to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Cape Town," said Wu Zhimin, a member of the Cape Town Huaxing Arts Troupe.
The event reflects the growing cultural exchange between the two countries, according to the organizer.
Chinese New Year celebrated in South Africa's Cape Town
A World Health Organization (WHO) medical epidemiologist on Sunday sought to ease public concerns over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, stressing that the virus is not airborne like COVID-19 and that the average person has no reason to worry.
Spain began evacuating passengers the same day from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius, which had anchored earlier off the Port of Granadilla on the island of Tenerife.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with more than 140 passengers and crew from 23 countries on board. The ship has reported eight infections, including three deaths. Six of the cases have been laboratory-confirmed as Andes virus infections, caused by a rodent-borne hantavirus endemic to South America and the only known hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission.
Boris Pavlin, a medical epidemiologist with the WHO, said the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak had been carefully managed by Spanish authorities and posed little risk to the general public. "This is not COVID. The average person does not need to be worried about hantavirus here in this setting. These folks are being managed very carefully, very deliberately, by the Spanish authorities; they're getting off the ship, they are getting into small boats, they are being spaced apart in the buses so there's no risk to one another. Even if one were to become symptomatic -- we know that none of them were symptomatic as they have been leaving the ship -- they're going straight to their aircraft and they're being taken to their respective national jurisdictions," he said.
Pavlin said the exact source of exposure remained under investigation, but the initial cases appeared to be linked to a pre-cruise land excursion in South America.
"From what we understand of the initial cases, there was -- as one does often on a cruise -- there was a land-side excursion before the cruise in which places were visited that are home to these specific rodents that are associated with the Andes hantavirus. These are not worldwide rodents; the long-tailed rice rat is very specific to the Andes Cordillera region of South America, and that's where people who are exposed to the rodents were. So it was in one of those places they were exposed. We don't know exactly because there are several possibilities, and I believe that the Argentinian authorities are actually even going to look at that and try to do some animal sampling to get to the very bottom of it. But that part's not unexpected at all," he said.
The official praised Spanish authorities' handling of the ship and described the response as a closely coordinated international effort.
"This has been an extremely cooperative, collegial international effort. The Spanish authorities are very diligent and deliberate about what's happening here. There's nothing that would surprise us. I think that somebody might become exposed; we want to obviously make sure that people who are coming off the ship are not newly exposed to one another as they get off and go to their respective places, and we're not seeing that," Pavlin said.
But while the immediate disembarkation process had gone smoothly, he emphasized that health officials were not letting their guard down.
"However, the contact tracing and follow-up of every person who has been in even the lightest contact with the patients will continue until a maximum incubation period. In any case, there are contingency plans should someone become ill, and we know that it doesn't just spread like wildfire, so even if they were to become ill, we don't expect a large outbreak after this," the official said.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak "not COVID," poses low public risk: WHO expert
