China bans travel from city

Restrictions in Wuhan are aimed at battling a deadly virus that has spread overseas.

BEIJING — A Chinese city of more than 11 million people shut down outbound flights and trains Thursday as the world’s most populous country battled the spread of a new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and killed 17, state media reported.

Everyone in the city of Wuhan was to be restricted to some degree. The stateowned People’s Daily newspaper said no one would be allowed to leave. The official New China News Agency said no one would be permitted to leave without a specific reason.

Train stations and the airport were to shut down at 10 a.m. Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance shuttle bus services would also be temporarily halted.

Most of the cases are in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province, but dozens of infections have popped up this week around the country as millions travel for the Lunar New Year, one of the world’s largest annual migrations of people. A handful of infected people who came from Wuhan have also been found overseas.

In Geneva, the World Health Organization said it had put off deciding whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency and asked its expert committee on the issue to continue meeting for a second day Thursday. The organization defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.

The number of new cases has risen sharply. All 17 of the people who have died were from Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. Wuhan authorities said the province has confirmed 444 cases, which would bring the national total to more than 500.

“There has already been human-to-human transmission and infection of medical workers,” Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission, said at a news conference with health officials. “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 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 2002-03 and killed about 800 people. Some experts have drawn parallels between the new coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome, another coronavirus that does not spread very easily among humans and is thought to be carried by camels. But the 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 believed.

Authorities in Thailand on Wednesday confirmed four cases of coronavirus — a Thai national and three Chinese visitors. Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and Taiwan have reported one case each. All of the sick people were from Wuhan or recently traveled there.

Macao, a former Portuguese colony that is a semiautonomous Chinese territory, reported one case Wednesday.