U.K. Reports First Coronavirus Cases as More Countries Suspend China Travel - The Wall Street Journal

U.K. Reports First Coronavirus Cases as More Countries Suspend China Travel - The Wall Street Journal

Challenges for travel and leisure stocks, slower economic growth and a weaker Chinese yuan are among the new market implications investors are dealing with as the new coronavirus spreads rapidly. Photo: Bloomberg/Qilai Shen

By

Erin Mendell

Updated Jan. 31, 2020 6:09 am ET

HONG KONG—Pakistan became the latest country to limit ties with China, its close ally, banning all commercial air travel with the mainland on Friday as the number of people infected with a novel coronavirus there approached 10,000 and the U.K. reported its first two cases.

The World Health Organization and the U.S. elevated their alerts, and China made its first move to repatriate citizens abroad who wanted to return to the country. It arranged planes to bring home people from Hubei province, whose capital Wuhan is at the center of the outbreak.

The moves came as the death toll from the dangerous new coronavirus rose to 213 late Thursday, up from 170 a day earlier, and the number of illnesses surpassed 9,500. The number of people sickened by the new coronavirus in China now exceeds the global total infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed nearly 800 people after emerging from southern China in late 2002 and spreading into 2003.

The U.K.’s National Health Service said Friday that two members of the same family in England have tested positive for coronavirus, the first confirmed cases in Britain.

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On Thursday, the U.S. State Department raised its alert to the highest level, advising Americans in China to consider leaving the country and requesting all nonessential U.S. government personnel postpone travel there. The State Department applies the same “Do Not Travel” advice to Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela.

Before widening it Thursday, the State Department had applied the “Do Not Travel” advice only to Hubei province, while urging Americans to reconsider travel to China more generally.

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In a news conference Thursday, the director-general of the World Health Organization called the coronavirus outbreak “unprecedented” and declared a global public-health emergency. Photo: Jean-Christophe Bott/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The State Department advice came hours after the WHO designated the Wuhan coronavirus a global public-health emergency, indicating that public-health authorities now consider the respiratory virus a significant threat beyond China.

In Pakistan, a close strategic ally of China, all air travel to China was ordered stopped until Feb. 2, the Civil Aviation Authority said Friday.

China initiated its repatriation efforts because people from Hubei province were facing “actual difficulties” overseas, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Friday. She didn’t detail the difficulties.

Xiamen Air, which is majority-owned by China Southern Airlines Co., said it was flying one plane each on Friday to Bangkok and Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia—two popular tourist destinations—to take people to Wuhan.

The central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, has been locked down for more than a week as China tries to contain the spread. Several airlines globally have suspended or cut back on their flights to mainland China.

The impact of the new coronavirus virus has rippled across the globe. Pictured, people wearing face masks in the U.K., where the first two cases were reported Friday. Photo: facundo arrizabalaga/Shutterstock

Several countries are making plans to repatriate their citizens stuck in Hubei. The U.S. is planning to evacuate more Americans from Wuhan as early as Monday, after an initial flight primarily for staff of the U.S. consulate there departed on Wednesday. That flight carried 210 Americans, stopping in Anchorage before landing at a military base in Southern California.

A plane chartered by the U.K. with 110 Britons and citizens of other countries left Wuhan for Britain on Friday morning, the U.K. government said on its website. The flight was scheduled to go to Spain after stopping in the U.K.

—Waqar Gillani, Wenxin Fan, Jason Douglas and Xiao Xiao contributed to this article.

Write to Erin Mendell at erin.mendell@wsj.com

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