Nearly 10,000 people have been infected in China by the new coronavirus (also known as 2019-nCor) and new cases were found abroad, with more than 20 countries now affected by the disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday declared the outbreak a global health emergency but said it was not recommending any international trade or travel restrictions and urged the numerous countries already taking such measures to reconsider.

Nevertheless, countries intensified travel curbs.

Iran’s Health Minister Saeed Namaki demanded the government prevent arrivals from China due to the situation of the virus.

In a tweet on Friday, Namaki said he had asked First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri in a letter “to inform the Iranian Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Roads about a halt to be put on the entry of all travelers from China until further notice.”

“All health bases at the country’s ports have been on high alert since the outbreak of Corona,” Namaki said.

The minister said more than 70 Iranian students residing in Wuhan, China will return home in the coming days.

IRNA

They “will be attended to in a suitable place under full surveillance and care” for two weeks after arriving in Iran, he added.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said Thursday Iran’s diplomatic officials were making all-out efforts to get Iranians out of Wuhan, which is the epicenter of an ongoing epidemic of coronavirus.

“Around-the-clock effort is underway to manage various aspects of this issue and to help fellow countrymen who live in contaminated areas in China,” Mousavi told reporters on Thursday.

The US State Department raised its warning alert to the highest level, telling Americans “do not travel” to China and urged those already there to leave.

Singapore, Vietnam, and Mongolia went a step further.

Citing a likely “sharper rise” in the spread of the virus, Singapore’s government barred arrivals and transit passengers who visited China in the past 14 days and stopped issuing all forms of new visas to Chinese passport holders.

Mongolia will ban Chinese nationals and foreigners coming from the neighboring country by plane, train or road from Saturday until March 2. Mongolians will be barred from going to China over the same period.

In Vietnam, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc ordered the suspension of new tourist visas for Chinese citizens and foreigners who have been in China over the last two weeks.

Trade with China will also be “discouraged” until the outbreak abates, he said.

Japan, meanwhile, joined Britain, Germany and other countries that have recommended that their citizens avoid China.

Action on 2019-nCor

The WHO has declared a global health emergency five times since the practice began in 2007 – for swine flu, polio, Zika and twice for Ebola.

It allows the UN health body to issue recommendations that the international community is expected to follow.

But the WHO warned Friday that closing borders was probably ineffective in halting transmissions of the virus and could even accelerate its spread.

“As we know from other scenarios, be it Ebola or other cases whenever people want to travel,… if the official paths are not open, they will find unofficial paths,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said in Geneva.

Authorities, businesses and worried people around the world have been taking matters into their own hands.

Many major airlines this week suspended or reduced flights to China.

Russia sealed its remote far-eastern frontier.

Papua New Guinea went so far as to bar all visitors from “Asian ports”.

Some countries banned entry for travelers from Wuhan, the city in central Hubei province where the virus first surfaced.

Italy, which has stopped all flights to and from China, declared a state of emergency on Friday to fast-track efforts to prevent the spread of the virus.

China on Friday said it sent charter planes to Thailand and Malaysia to bring Hubei residents back to Wuhan, citing the “practical difficulties” that they have encountered overseas.

In a sign of growing global anxiety, more than 6,000 tourists were temporarily confined aboard their cruise ship at an Italian port after two Chinese passengers fell ill.

They later tested negative for the coronavirus.

More than 40,000 workers at a vast Chinese-controlled industrial complex in Indonesia’s Sulawesi island have been quarantined over fears about the virus.

Myanmar sent a plane back to China after a Chinese passenger was hospitalized with possible symptoms of the virus.

The US reported its first case of person-to-person transmission of the virus on American soil – a man in Chicago who got it from his wife, who had traveled to Wuhan.

Britain and Russia each reported their first two cases.

Death toll grows

China has taken extreme steps to stop the spread of the virus, including effectively quarantining more than 50 million people in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province.

It has also suspended school nationwide and extended the Lunar New Year holiday in an effort to limit people traveling.

But the toll continues to swell, rising to 213 after 43 new deaths were reported on Friday. All the dead have been in China.

China’s National Health Commission also confirmed 1,982 new cases, bringing the total to 9,692.

That exceeds the 8,096 cases from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) a similar pathogen that spread to more than two dozen countries in 2002-03, and killed 774 people, mostly in China and Hong Kong.

Another 102,000 people are under medical observation in China with possible coronavirus symptoms.

The new virus is believed to have emerged in a Wuhan market that sold wild game, and spread by a Lunar New Year holiday season in which hundreds of millions of Chinese travel domestically or abroad.

Airlifts continue

Countries have scrambled to evacuate their nationals from Wuhan, with US and Japanese citizens leaving first on Wednesday.

Britain and France airlifted hundreds of their nationals on Friday.

Three people aboard Japan’s first evacuation flight tested positive after landing back home, two of whom showed no symptoms, underscoring the difficulty detecting the coronavirus.

South Korea said 18 of around 350 people who were repatriated from Wuhan were hospitalized after showing symptoms.

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Asian stocks and currencies fell as the death toll rose and more cases were reported around the world, fuelling concern that China, the world’s second-largest economy, maybe hit hard.

There are growing concerns that thousands of Chinese factory work on the Lunar New Year holidays may struggle to get back to work next week due to extensive travel restrictions imposed to stop the virus spreading.

Alphabet Inc’s Google and Sweden’s IKEA joined other major firms in closing operations in China, and the list of sports events hit by the virus grew, with the Chinese Football Association postponing domestic games in 2020 and Olympic women’s football qualifying matches in Australia in doubt, with the Chinese team quarantined in a Brisbane hotel.

China’s National Health Commission said the total number of deaths from the coronavirus in the country climbed to 170 as of late Wednesday and the number of infected patients rose to 7,711, Reuters reported.

Almost all of the deaths have been in the central province of Hubei, home to about 60 million people and now under virtual lockdown. The virus emerged last month in a live wild animal market in the provincial capital Wuhan.

Infections have been reported in at least 15 other countries with 104 confirmed cases. But no deaths have occurred outside China.

It is too early to determine the death rate as there are likely to be many cases of milder disease going undetected. Like other respiratory infections, it spreads between people in droplets from coughs and sneezes.

It has an incubation of between one and 14 days, and there are signs it may spread before symptoms show.

Chinese National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei has said the virus was infectious during incubation, which was not the case with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), another coronavirus that emerged from China and killed about 800 people in 2002-2003.

The World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee is due to reconvene on Thursday to decide whether the virus constitutes a global emergency. Of particular concern have been cases of human-to-human transmission in Germany, Vietnam, and Japan.

Countries getting their citizens out of China have to decide what to do with them, given efforts to keep the virus at bay.

Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and New Zealand will quarantine all evacuees regardless of whether they show symptoms for at least two weeks, while the United States and Japan were planning voluntary isolation for shorter periods.

Two of three returnees from Japan who tested positive for the virus in Tokyo on Thursday had shown no symptoms of their infections.

South Korean protesters used tractors to block access to facilities earmarked as quarantine centers in the cities of Asan and Jincheon on Wednesday.

A handful of protesters calling for the quarantine center to be located further away from homes and schools in Jincheon gathered outside the site on Thursday.

 “I am a mother of a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old,” said Lee Ji-hyun. “I was so worried I sent them to stay with my in-laws.”

President Moon Jae-in urged people not to give in to fear as the country prepared to evacuate the first of about 700 citizens from Wuhan.

 “The weapons that will protect us from the new coronavirus are not fear and aversion but trust and cooperation,” Moon said.

Up to four planned South Korean evacuation flights to Wuhan are expected to begin later on Thursday.

Singapore said it was brining 92 citizens home on Thursday and all of them, and the foreign ministry staff accompanying them, will either be taken to hospital or quarantined for 14 days.

Nearly 200 Americans, mostly diplomats, and families, airlifted from Wuhan on Wednesday will remain isolated at a US military base in California for at least 72 hours, officials said.

A second flight with Japanese evacuees from Wuhan landed in Japan on Thursday with nine people showing symptoms of fever or coughing, broadcaster NHK reported.

The crisis is weighing heavily on China’s economy.

A government economist said first-quarter growth could fall by one point to 5% or lower.

Some airlines are suspending flights to China, from British Airways and Lufthansa to Air Canada and American Airlines.

Alphabet Inc’s Google said it would temporarily shut all its offices in China and Sweden’s IKEA said it had temporarily closed all its China stores.

In many Chinese cities, streets are largely deserted.

Tourist attractions are closed, while Starbucks coffee shops are requiring people to have their temperatures checked and to wear masks.

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While there were no new death toll confirmed outside of Hubei, the national tally of verified infections by China coronavirus rose by 769, around half of them in Hubei, the National Health Commission said. It said 461 of those infected were in serious condition, AFP reported.

China has locked down Hubei in the country’s center, an unprecedented operation affecting tens of millions of people and intended to slow transmission of the respiratory virus.

The previously unknown contagion has caused global concern because of its similarity to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pathogen, which killed hundreds across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

Drastic travel restrictions have been imposed outside the epicenter, with Shandong province and four cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, and Tianjin – announcing bans on long-distance buses entering or leaving.

The move will affect millions of people traveling over the Lunar New Year holiday, which authorities said would be extended while the government works to contain the virus.

The populous southern province of Guangdong, Jiangxi in central China, and three cities made it mandatory for residents to wear face masks in public.

Originating in Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, the virus has spread throughout China and across the world – with cases confirmed in around a dozen countries including as far away as the United States.

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The 2019-nCoV virus, which had infected more than 870 people as of Friday morning, originated in Wuhan. China has closed down public-transport links in the city and at least nine others, sealing off a combined 30 million people.

Doctors in Wuhan have said that people seeking medical attention have waited hours in line, that screening the disease is difficult, that there is not enough protective gear, and that some doctors have been told at times not to go to work over fears they could catch the virus.

Video footage has captured people packed in small hallways waiting for treatment.

Wuhan authorities on Friday said a new, 1,000-bed hospital was being built for coronavirus patients to “address the insufficiency of existing medical resources,” the Associated Press reported.

Patients with coronavirus are being treated in hospitals and fever clinics across the city.

The new hospital is to be built in six days and to be put to use February 3, the state-run news site The Paper reported, citing the state media outlet People’s Daily.

The hospital is to be made from prefabricated buildings — making it quicker and cheaper to build — on the outskirts of the city, People’s Daily reported.

Video footage Friday showed construction machinery working at the site.

The strategy is a repeat of how China dealt with the outbreak of SARS in 2003, which killed more than 770 people.

In April 2003, Beijing built in just seven days the Xiaotangshan Hospital, which the People’s Daily said treated one-seventh of China’s SARS patients at the time.

People’s Daily called that hospital “a miracle in the history of medicine.”

The Wuhan coronavirus can spread among humans and has already spread to some healthcare workers treating the infected.

It has spread to at least eight other countries: the US, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.

These countries have quarantined people who are infected and are monitoring those who have been in close contact with the infected.

Other countries, including Scotland and Finland, have suspected cases.

Countries around the world are screening passengers in airports for symptoms and have quarantine procedures in place.

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The flu-like virus continues to spread and has killed 17 people there, with more than 500 people infected on the Chinese mainland, specifically originated in Wuhan.

Local transportation networks, airports and train stations in Wuhan will be closed from 10 am on Thursday morning, state media reported on Wednesday.

The government has also asked citizens not to leave the city except in special circumstances, RT reported.

Cases have also been confirmed in the US, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Disease experts in the UK believe that nearly 2,000 people may be infected and not showing symptoms.

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