Several countries began isolating hundreds of citizens evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in an effort to stop the global spread of an epidemic which has killed 170, with South Korea calling for calm in the face of protests at a quarantine center.
Asian stocks and currencies fell on Thursday as fatalities rose and more cases were reported around the world.
China’s National Health Commission said the total number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus in the country climbed to 170 as of late Wednesday and the number of infected patients rose to 7,711.
Almost all the deaths so far have been in the central province of Hubei, home to about 60 million people and now under virtual lockdown. The virus emerged last month in a live wild animal market in the provincial capital Wuhan.
Infections have been reported in at least 15 other nations, with 104 confirmed cases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said its Emergency Committee would reconvene behind closed doors on Thursday to decide whether the rapid spread of the new virus from China now constitutes a global emergency.
“In the last few days the progress of the virus especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva, naming Germany, Vietnam and Japan.
“Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”
