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News ID: 75510
Publish Date : 25 January 2020 - 22:00

China in Grave Situation, Coronavirus Spread Accelerating


BEIJING (Dispatches) – The spread of a deadly new virus is accelerating, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned, after holding a special government meeting on the Lunar New Year public holiday.
The country is facing a "grave situation” Xi told senior officials, according to state television.
The coronavirus has killed at least 41 people and infected some 1,400 since its discovery in the city of Wuhan.
Travel restrictions have already hit several affected cities.
And from Sunday, private vehicles will be banned from central districts of Wuhan, the source of the outbreak.
A second emergency hospital is to be built there within weeks to handle 1,300 new patients, and will be finished in half a month, state newspaper the People’s Daily said. It is the second such rapid construction project: work on another 1,000-bed hospital has already begun.
The fatalities so far have been contained to China, which has placed a reported 56 million people on lock down, with the majority occurring in the Hubei province around Wuhan.
Hu Yinghai, deputy director-general of the Civil Affairs Department in Hubei province, said: "We are steadily pushing forward the disease control and prevention ... But right now we are facing an extremely severe public health crisis,”
In a bid to stop the spread, China’s capital city Beijing will stop all inter-province shuttle buses from January 26, local media reported on Saturday, with no detail of when bus services will be resumed.
State-run China Global Television Network reported in a tweet on Saturday a doctor who had been treating patients in Wuhan,

62-year-old Liang Wudong, had died from the virus.
It was not immediately clear if his death was already counted in the official toll of 41.
In the UK, authorities are desperately tracing 2,000 people who flew from the region of China where the Coronavirus broke out to Britain in the last two weeks.
The Department of Health is hunting for passengers who came from Wuhan, a city of 11 million people which is on lock down amid the outbreak.
Outside of China, the virus has been detected in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, Malaysia, France, the United States and Australia.
In Australia, three men, aged 53, 43 and 35 in New South Wales were in stable condition after they were confirmed to have the virus after returning from Wuhan earlier this month.