Chinese to seal off city as virus kills 17
Experts to consider call for a global emergency
HEALTH: People will not be allowed to leave the Chinese city of Wuhan and China will close the train station and airport to contain a new virus that has killed 17 people.
The announcement came as the World Health Organisation convened experts to advise whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.
CHINESE STATE media has said the city of Wuhan is shutting down outbound flights and trains to contain a new virus that has killed 17 people.
The state-owned People’s Daily newspaper said in a tweet that no one would be allowed to leave the city starting at 10am local time and that train stations and the airport will shut down.
It said that Wuhan authorities would also be shutting down city buses, subways, ferries and longdistance shuttle buses.
Chinese health authorities have urged people in the city to avoid crowds and public gatherings after warning that the coronavirus has infected more than 400 people and could spread further.
The appeal came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) convened a group of independent experts to advise whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.
The number of new cases has risen sharply in China, the centre of the outbreak.
Seventeen people have died, all in Hubei province, since the outbreak emerged in its provincial capital of Wuhan late last month. The province has confirmed 444 cases there.
Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission, said: “There has already been human-to-human transmission and infection of medical workers.
“Evidence has shown that the disease has been transmitted through the respiratory tract and there is the possibility of viral mutation.”
The illness comes from a newly
There has already been human-to-human transmission
Li Bin, from China’s National Health Commission.
identified type of coronavirus, a family of viruses that can cause the common cold as well as more serious illnesses such as the Sars outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-2003 and killed about 800 people.
Some experts have drawn parallels between the new coronavirus and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, another coronavirus that does not spread
very easily among humans and is thought to be carried by camels.
But WHO’s Asia office tweeted this week that “there may now be sustained human-to-human transmission,” which raises the possibility that the epidemic is
spreading more easily and may no longer require an animal source to spark infections, as officials initially reported.
Authorities in Thailand have confirmed four cases, a Thai national and three Chinese visitors.
Japan, South Korea, the United States and Taiwan have all reported one case each. All of the illnesses were of people from Wuhan or who recently travelled there.
“The situation is under control here,” Thai public health minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters, saying there are no reports of the infection spreading to others. “We checked all of them: taxi drivers, people who wheeled the wheelchairs for the patients, doctors and nurses who worked around them.”
Macao, a former Portuguese colony that is a semi-autonomous Chinese city, has reported one case.
In response to the US case, President Donald Trump said: “We do have a plan, and we think it’s going to be handled very well. We’ve already handled it very well ... we’re in very good shape, and I think China’s in very good shape also.”