Coronavirus news – live: US to evacuate citizens from Wuhan as China’s president warns virus is ‘accelerating’ and country faces ‘grave situation’
Chinese president Xi Jinping has called the “accelerating spread” of the Wuhan coronavirus a “grave situation”, as Beijing escalates measures to contain the illness.
The nation’s ruling communist party has introduced a string of new measures aimed at stopping the spread of the virus – including the lockdown of 16 cities near Wuhan to restrict the movement of more than 50 million people, covering a population roughly as large as England’s.
Meanwhile US officials have arranged a charter flight to bring citizens and diplomats back from the epicentre. Russia is also believed to be looking into evacuating the region of its citizens, according to the state’s RIA news agency.
And the first case of the virus in Canada has been announced, with one person confirmed to be a presumptive carrier of the virus following testing in Toronto.
Here are the day’s events as they happened:
