Thehe Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Saturday that China was facing a “serious” situation because the epidemic of viral pneumonia which infected about 1,300 people and left 41 dead “is accelerating”, reaching Europe and the Australia, despite the strengthening of measures taken to try to stop its spread.
The Chinese government will suspend travel to China and abroad in response to the epidemic of viral pneumonia that has killed 41 people in the country and spread to several continents, public television said on Saturday.
At the same time, medical officers have been dispatched to Wuhan, the city in central China where the virus, which is currently de facto quarantined, appeared in December, and the construction of a second emergency hospital has been launched.
Restrictions imposed on circulation in this cradle of the epidemic, maximum alert in Hong Kong, systematic controls in transport from north to south of the country: China is multiplying initiatives to try to halt the progression of the coronavirus now present on four continents .
“Win the battle”
“In the face of the grave situation of an accelerating epidemic (…) it is necessary to strengthen the centralized and unified leadership of the Central Party Committee,” said President Xi Jinping during a committee meeting. of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, the seven-member body that heads China. And to add that his country could “win the battle”.
France, for its part, announced on Friday evening three confirmed cases of contamination, presented as the first in Europe, with Australia reporting on Saturday of four patients, people recently returned from China.
Half a dozen countries in Asia are now affected and a second case has been confirmed in the United States.
> Coronavirus: false alarm at CHU Saint-Pierre in Brussels
– .
