Hong Kong will sever rail connections to the mainland, and Russia closed its border with China to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced both high-speed and regular train stations connected to mainland China would be closed by the end of the week. Ferries, cross-border tour buses, and flights would also be slashed.
“The flow of people between the two places needs to be drastically reduced,” Lam said while wearing a protective face mask.
Three Russian regions in the Far East also closed their borders with China until Feb. 7, according to TASS news agency. Russia has not had any confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but millions of Chinese tourists visit the country each year. The closures affect border crossings in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Khabarovsk, and Amur regions.
The number of deaths from the new virus has risen to 106 in China since it was detected in December. More than 4,500 cases of the infection have been reported.
There are five confirmed cases in the United States so far. The U.S. Consulate in Wuhan, the city at the center of the epidemic, began evacuating personnel and some other U.S. citizens out of the city Tuesday.
