MANILA: The Philippines reported the first death on Sunday outside of China from a new coronavirus, deepening global fears about an epidemic that has claimed more than 300 lives.
The first foreign fatality came as an escalating number of governments around the world closed their borders to people from China in a bid to stop it spreading.
The United States, Australia and Israel banned foreign nationals from visiting if they had been in China over the previous 14 days, and warned their own citizens from travelling there.
Mongolia, Russia and Nepal closed their land borders, while Papua New Guinea went as far as to ban anyone arriving from ports or airports across Asia.
The containment measures may have slowed the spread of the virus but not stopped it.
The person who died in the Philippines was a Chinese man from Wuhan, the World Health Organization said.
“This is the first reported death outside China,” Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the WHO representative to the Philippines, told reporters in Manila. Britain, Russia and Sweden also this weekend confirmed their first infections.
The death toll in China soared to 304 on Sunday, with authorities reporting 45 new deaths from the previous day.
There were 2,590 confirmed cases in China, bringing the total to nearly 14,500.
The number of confirmed infections in China is far higher than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-03.
SARS, which is caused by a pathogen similar to the new coronavirus and also originated in China, killed 774 people worldwide – most of them in mainland China and Hong Kong.
China has also imposed unprecedented measures to curb people travelling with the respiratory virus believed to be able to jump from person to person via droplets.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million people and the capital of Hubei province, has been under virtual lockdown since January 23 with the closure of all transport routes out.
Similar measures have been in place across all of Hubei, effectively sealing off more than 50 million people.
The emergence of the virus came at the worst time for China, coinciding with the Lunar New Year Holiday when hundreds of millions travel across the country in planes, trains and buses for family reunions.
The holiday was scheduled to end on Friday, but it was extended to Monday to give authorities more time to try and deal with the crisis.
While Hubei and some major cities, including Shanghai, extended the holiday, work was due to resume in others and people were crisscrossing the nation over the weekend to get back in time. (AFP)