China locks down the two cities at the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak: Wuhan and Huanggang
The WHO has said it will decide on Thursday whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, which would step up the international response.
Authorities had confirmed 571 cases and 17 deaths by the end of Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission said. Earlier, it said another 393 suspected cases had been reported. Wuhan’s Hankou rail station was nearly deserted, with gates blocked, state broadcasts showed. The government urged citizens not to leave the city.
As the city slipped into isolation, residents thronged into hospitals for checks and scrambled for supplies, clearing out supermarket shelves and queuing for petrol. Some experts believe the new virus is not as dangerous as previous coronaviruses such as SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome , which has killed more than 700 people since 2012.
The economic impact of such outbreaks are hard to quantify but a 2006 estimate by the International Air Transport Association calculated that SARS shaved just over 1 percentage point off the GDP of China in 2003.
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