China’s Xi makes 1st visit to coronavirus epicenter

ANKARA

China’s president arrived in the country’s central Wuhan city on Tuesday morning, his first visit since the city shot to global infamy last December as the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak.

According to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, President Xi Jinping will inspect medical facilities and prevention measures implemented in Wuhan and other regions of the Hubei province.

He will also meet medical workers, military officers, and soldiers who have been on the forefront of Hubei and Wuhan’s fight to control the outbreak.

Authorities in Wuhan are also expected to shut down on Tuesday the last two of the 16 temporary hospitals set up for coronavirus patients.

China has been the worst-hit country in the world and has reported over 3,100 deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

It has nearly 81,000 confirmed cases since last December, with over 4,700 in serious condition at the moment. Nearly 17,000 people are also under observation in hospitals.

The rate of transmission, however, has fallen over recent weeks.

On Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission said only 19 new cases were reported in the country over the past 24 hours.

Mongolia reports 1st case

Authorities in Mongolia reported the country’s first COVID-19 case on Tuesday.

According to the state-run Montsame News Agency, the patient is a French national who arrived in the capital Ulaanbaatar on a flight from Moscow on March 2.

The unidentified person showed symptoms of the virus from March 7 and was quarantined after preliminary tests confirmed the infection.

Mongolia’s Foreign Ministry said foreigners coming from China, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Iran, or foreign travelers who visited these countries over the past two weeks, would not be allowed to enter Mongolia.

It said Mongolian nationals returning from these countries would be quarantined for two weeks “at their own expense”, the official news agency reported.

Mongolia also extended the suspension of flights to and from South Korea and Japan until March 28.

The global death toll from the coronavirus is over 3,800 with more than 110,000 confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The virus originated in China but has reached over 100 countries, with the WHO saying on Monday that the “threat of a pandemic has become very real”.