The spread of the coronavirus from Wuhan constitutes an international health emergency, the WHO announced in Geneva.
Russia has partially closed its border with China due to the coronavirus and Vietnam is stopping issuing tourist visas to Chinese people.
A number of airlines are canceling flights to and from China.
”"Our biggest concern is that the virus has the potential to spread to countries with weaker health systems," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.
According to the WHO, there is no reason to order restrictions on international travel. Nor should international trade be restricted. However, travel restrictions have already been widely implemented.
Russia announces that the land border with China is being closed, with the exception of some train traffic. The Russia-China land border is the sixth longest in the world.
”"We will inform everyone today about the border closure measures in the far east and other measures taken by the Russian government," said Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, according to the state-run Russian news agency Tass.
Vietnam has stopped issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens after three new cases of the infection were detected in the country.
A number of airlines have temporarily suspended flights to China, including SAS, Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways. Israel is not allowing any planes flying from China to land in the country.
Hong Kong has closed six of fourteen land crossings to mainland China and no one from Hubei Province is allowed to enter. A large number of sports facilities, campsites, museums and other public places are closed.
In Italy, 6,000 people were kept in isolation on one of the world's largest cruise ships. The Costa Smeralda was stranded in Civitavecchia - a port city near Rome - after two passengers from China were suspected of having contracted the Wuhan virus. But on Thursday evening, the Italian health ministry announced that no coronavirus had been detected on the ship.
The total number of confirmed cases is now over 8,200, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. The province of Hubei in China, where the outbreak began in the city of Wuhan, is still the worst affected. There have been just over 4,900 cases registered there, and just over 160 of the confirmed deaths since the outbreak occurred in Hubei.
The official death toll is up to just over 170. The number of infected cases is expected to continue to rise in the coming days, as over 12,000 people are suspected of being infected.
The first case of person-to-person transmission of the virus in the United States was confirmed on Thursday. According to the US health authority, a man in Chicago was infected by his wife. The woman, in her 60s, was in turn infected in Wuhan.
The coronavirus can be contagious during the incubation period, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) lasts between two days and two weeks. According to a new Chinese study, the average time between a person being infected and the onset of symptoms such as fever, cough and difficulty breathing is 5.2 days.
Many companies have decided to temporarily close operations in China. For example, Swedish furniture giant Ikea announced that all 30 stores in China would be temporarily closed. The announcement came the day after the group announced that half of its stores would close and that opening hours would be limited.
Clothing giant H&M is closing 45 stores in the country.
A total of at least 15 countries have confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the WHO, with Finland and the United Arab Emirates among the latest countries to report their first cases.
Source: TT
