MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Xi Jinping says China is sure of defeating “a devil coronavirus”, but the disease continues to expand to other countries

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Xi met in Beijing to discuss how to protect Chinese and foreigners in areas affected

President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China was sure of defeating a “devil” coronavirus that has killed at least 106 people, but the international alarm was rising as the outbreak spread across the world.

From France to Japan, governments were organizing evacuations, while Hong Kong - scene of anti-China unrest for months - planned to suspend rail and ferry links with the mainland.

The United States said it was expanding screening of arrivals from China from five to 20 airports and Health Secretary Alex Azar said nothing was “off the table” in terms of imposing further travel restrictions.

Among countries pulling nationals out of Wuhan, the central Chinese city of 11 million people where the outbreak started, the US Embassy in Beijing said a chartered plane would pick up its consular staff on Wednesday.

The European Commission said it would help fund two aircraft to fly EU citizens home, with 250 French nationals leaving on the first flight.

World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Xi met in Beijing to discuss how to protect Chinese and foreigners in areas affected by the virus and possible evacuation alternatives, a WHO spokesman said.

“The virus is a devil and we cannot let the devil hide,” state television quoted Xi as saying.

“China will strengthen international cooperation and welcomes the WHO participation in virus prevention ... China is confident of winning the battle against the virus.”

The UN agency said later that China had agreed WHO can send a team of international experts “as soon as possible” to increase understanding of the virus and guide the global response.

But investors are fretting about the impact of the crisis on the world's second-biggest economy, though stock markets rebounded on Tuesday following a sharp sell-off the previous day.

An outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03 led to a 45 per cent plunge in air passenger demand in Asia. The travel industry is more reliant on Chinese travelers now, and China's share of the global economy has quadrupled.

The flu-like virus has spread overseas, but none of the 106 deaths has been outside China and all but six were in Wuhan, where the virus emerged last month, probably from illegally traded wildlife.

However, cases in Germany, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan where the virus has spread person-to-person - as opposed to a visitor from China arriving - have heightened concern.

Wuhan is under virtual quarantine, with a lockdown on transport and bans on gatherings. Tens of millions in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, live under some form of travel curb.

Communist Party-ruled China has been eager to show it is transparent over this outbreak, after initially covering up the extent of the SARS epidemic that killed about 800 people globally.

Known as “2019-nCoV”, the newly identified coronavirus can cause pneumonia and, like other respiratory infections, it spreads between people in droplets from coughs and sneezes. It is too early to know what its death rate will be, since there are likely to be many cases of milder disease going undetected. It has an incubation of between one and 14 days.