WUHAN HAS been turned into a near ghost-town under a lockdown that has largely confined the industrial hub’s 11 million people to their homes
The WHO last week stopped short of declaring the outbreak a global emergency, which could have prompted a more aggressive international response such as travel restrictions. But global concern has been growing, with Japan and Germany on Tuesday reporting the first humanto-human infections outside China. Until now, all cases in more than a dozen countries involved people who had been in or around Wuhan.
In Japan, a man in sixties contracted virus apparently his the after driving two groups of tourists from the city earlier in January, the health ministry said. He was hospitalised with flu-like symptoms on Saturday. On the other side of the world, a 33-year-old German man caught the disease off a Chinese colleague from Shanghai who visited Germany last week, according to health officials.
The development came after countries including Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Philippines announced tighter visa restrictions for people coming from China. Experts believe the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan and then jumped to humans, with Chinese health officials saying on Tuesday that people infect each other through sneezing or coughing, and possibly through contact.
Authorities initially sealed off Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province late last week, trapping more than
50 million people. China then halted international and domestic group tours.
It also imposed a wide range of travel restrictions inside China, suspending long-distance bus routes and more than
2,000 train services. But with the death toll climbing and more fatalities reported in Chinese cities far away from Wuhan, authorities on Tuesday urged people to delay any foreign travel “to protect the health and safety of Chinese and foreign people”, the National Immigration Administration said.
Wuhan, meanwhile, has been turned into a near ghost-town under a lockdown that has largely confined the industrial hub's 11 million people to their homes.
With a ban on car traffic, the streets were nearly deserted apart from the occasional ambulance — although the city's hospitals are overwhelmed.
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