China coronavirus: Travel warning issued as deadly Wuhan virus could mutate and spread further

A new viral illness that has infected hundreds and caused at least nine deaths could mutate and spread further, Chinese health authorities have warned.

There are 440 confirmed cases of coronavirus according to Li Bin, deputy director of the National Health Commission.

“There has already been human-to-human transmission and infection of medical workers,” Mr Li said at a news conference with health experts.

“Evidence has shown that the disease has been transmitted through the respiratory tract and there is the possibility of viral mutation.”

He went on to advise people not to travel into and out of the city of Wuhan, according to the BBC, adding: ”Basically, do not go to Wuhan. And those in Wuhan please do not leave the city.”

The cornavirus, which causes pneumonia, comes from a family of viruses that can cause the common cold as well as more serious illnesses such as the Sars outbreak, which spread from China to more than a dozen countries between 2002-2003 and killed around 800 people.

Four cases have been confirmed in Thailand, while Japan, South Korea and the United States have each reported one case. All of those who fell ill were people from Wuhan or those who had recently travelled to the city.

On Wednesday, Hong Kong and Macau also reported their first cases. 

“The situation is under control here,” Thailand’s public health minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, said, adding there were no reports of the infection spreading to others. “We checked all of them: taxi drivers, people who wheeled the wheelchairs for the patients, doctors and nurses who worked around them.”

Travel agencies organising trips to North Korea said the country had banned foreign tourists because of the outbreak. Most tourists to North Korea are Chinese or travel to the country through neighbouring China.

Other countries have stepped up screening measures for travellers from China, especially those arriving from Wuhan. Worries have been heightened by the coming of the Lunar New Year holiday rush, when millions of Chinese travel at home and abroad.

“We are still in the process of learning more about this disease.” Gao Fu, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control said at the news conference.

Mr Gao said officials are working on the assumption the outbreak resulted from human exposure to wild animals being sold illegally at a food market in Wuhan and the virus is mutating. Mutations can make the virus spread faster or make people sicker .

Jiao Yahui, a health commission official, said “the disease will continue to develop. It has developed different features compared with the early stage, and the prevention and precautionary measures need to change accordingly.”

Earlier this week, health officials confirmed the disease can spread between humans after finding two infected people in Guangdong province, in southern China, who had not been to Wuhan.

Fifteen medical workers also tested positive for the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission has said.

Fourteen of them, one doctor and 13 nurses, were infected by a patient who had been hospitalised for neurosurgery but also had the coronavirus.

“This is a very profound lesson, which is that there must not be any cracks in our prevention and control,” Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, said about the infections of the medical workers in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV .

Additional reporting by agencies