China expanded drastic travel restrictions on Monday and prolonged a public holiday to contain an epidemic that has killed 80 people and infected more than 2,300, as several countries prepared to evacuate their citizens from a quarantined city at the outbreak's epicenter.
Fears over the global economic impact of the deadly China virus sent oil prices plunging more than on Monday to extend last week's sell-off, while safe-haven assets including the yen and gold rallied.
The official death toll from the coronavirus in China jumped on early Saturday to 41 from 26 a day before, as local media reported a doctor on the frontline of the battle to contain the virus in Wuhan city had died.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday it was “a bit too early” to declare a new coronavirus a global health emergency as China put millions of people on lockdown amid an outbreak that has killed 25 people and infected more than 800.
A man who fell ill in Mexico on Monday following a December trip to Wuhan, China, is under observation as a potential case of the coronavirus, the respiratory virus that has killed at least 19 people worldwide.
China said it was halting flights and trains from Thursday out of Wuhan, the city of 11 million people at the centre of a deadly SARS-like virus outbreak, as the UN extended emergency talks on the disease.
The number of deaths from a new SARS-like virus has climbed to nine as of the end of Tuesday with 440 confirmed cases, Chinese health officials said as authorities stepped up efforts to control the outbreak by discouraging public gatherings in Hubei province.
A SARS-like virus that has spread across China and reached three other Asian nations is contagious between humans, a government expert said, and the World Health Organization announced that a key emergency committee would meet this week to discuss the infections. The news came as Wuhan health authorities reported on Tuesday that a fourth person had died of the coronavirus.
The United States will begin screening efforts at three U.S. airports to detect travelers from the central Chinese city of Wuhan who may have symptoms of a new respiratory virus that so far has killed two people and infected 45 more, public health officials said on Friday (Jan 17).
A third person has died in Brazil of suspected poisoning from a batch of craft beer contaminated with a toxic chemical used in antifreeze and other products, police in the state of Minas Gerais said on Thursday.