Hong Kong, Jan. 25 (IANS): Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Saturday declared the impact of the the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak to be of the highest emergency response level, raising it from the previous status of "serious", after the city reported five confirmed cases.
Addressing the media here, Lam said that she will personally chair an inter-departmental steering committee which will hope to issue strategic and other measures as soon as practicable, reports the South China Morning Post newspaper.
She also announced health declaration requirements would be extended to all entry points into Hong Kong, including the border crossings at Lo Wu and Lok Ma Chau.
Lam said the government would also look to impose temperature checks for outgoing travellers, with priority given to those heading to Shenzhen and Macau.
The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon, scheduled for February 9, will be cancelled, with about 70,000 participants affected, Lam added.
Hong Kong school students would get two more weeks of holiday during the Lunar New Year and won't return to classes until February 17.
As of Friday, the five confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection in Hong Kong were patients who had travelled to Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China.
Flights from Wuhan to Hong Kong were cancelled since the Chinese city was put on a lockdown on Thursday morning.
The development comes after China's National Health Commission on Saturday put the death toll at 41 in the country, while the number of infected persons were 1,287, with 237 patients in serious conditions.
The WHO is yet to declare the outbreak as an international health emergency.
Besides Hong Kong, the others cases outside mainland China were reported in France (two), Australia (one), Thailand (four including two cured), Japan (two including one cured), South Korea (two), the US (two), Vietnam (two), Singapore (three), Nepal (one), Macao (two) and Taiwan (three).
China to build second new hospital to treat coronavirus cases as death toll rises to 41
China on Saturday announced plans to build a second hospital within half a month to treat more cases of the deadly coronavirus as the fast spreading virus continues to wreak havoc in the country and abroad with 41 people dead and more than 1,300 infected, dampening the Chinese New Year celebrations.
The confirmed cases for the first time crossed the 1,000 mark and rose sharply to 1,287 as of Friday with 237 people in critical condition battling for their lives in China, the National Health Commission said on Saturday.
Almost all provinces, including Beijing, are reporting steady rise in the number of cases mostly of people who travelled from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
The pneumonia situation had resulted in 41 deaths, including 39 in central China's Hubei province and one in north-eastern province Heilongjiang, the health commission said on Saturday.
Additionally, a total of 1,965 suspected cases have also been reported, it said.
China on Saturday said it will build another 1,300 bed makeshift hospital in Wuhan in the next 15 days in addition to the 1,000 bed hospital being built in the city in 10 days, state-run People's Daily reported.
The feverish pace at which the hospitals are being built indicate that China apparently is preparing to treat far more patients considering the speed at which the virus is spreading.
The virus has spread to Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Nepal, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States as of Thursday.
Japan on Friday reported a second confirmed case.
A chinese doctor reportedly died of the novel coronavirus on Saturday morning, the first fatality among health workers since the pneumonia-like illness first surfaced in late December, state-run China Daily quoted online news website Paper.cn as saying.
Liang Wudong, a 62-year-old doctor with the otolaryngology department who treats conditions in the ear, nose and throat at Hubei Xinhua Hospital, was suspected of contracting the new virus on January 16. The hospital that he works is in Wuhan.
On January 18, he was transferred to Hubei Jinyintan Hospital, which has received the majority of infected patients, and died at about 7 am on Saturday, the report said.
Previously, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said on Tuesday that 15 medical workers were confirmed as contracting the virus, with one suspected case. One of them is critically ill, the China Daily report said.
Wuhan, the city of 11 million people, is where the virus is believed to have first emerged. The victims' average age is 73, with 89 being the oldest and 48 youngest.
Also China's National Health Commission has dispatched 1,230 medical staff to Wuhan to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak in the region.