The World Health Organization has said foreign nationals should not be evacuated from China as countries rush to airlift their citizens to protect them from the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Airlines have also cancelling flights and adjusting schedules as a growing number of countries raise travel warnings to not just Hubei province where the new coronavirus broke out, but also to the rest of mainland China.
The 2019 Novel Coronavirus which is similar to the SARS pathogen has claimed at least 100 lives since emerging in a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread around the world.
With provincial authorities taking increasing flak from the public over their initial response, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited central Wuhan city, the epicentre of the outbreak, to encourage medical workers and promise reinforcements.
China extends its week-long holiday by an extra three days to February 2 to help stem the coronavirus epidemic, as authorities announced that 2,744 people had fallen ill and at least 80 had died.
Small numbers of cases also have been found in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the US, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, France and Australia.
China's markets, where wild and often poached animals are packed together, have been described as a breeding ground for disease and an incubator for a multitude of viruses to evolve and jump the species barrier to humans.
More than 50 million people are on lockdown in China as the government warns the virus is accelerating its spread.
The transport and public space restrictions now encompass some 40 million people as the 2019-nCoV spread to some 10 countries. There are over 800 confirmed cases in China alone.
The virus originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei late last year and has spread to Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the US, Thailand, South Korea and Japan.
Beijing locks down some 20 million people in several cities to contain the disease, preventing planes and trains from leaving in an unprecedented move that health experts say is "new to science."
Here's an explainer on the airline industry's response to the outbreak so far and its potential financial exposure compared to SARS in 2003, which killed nearly 800 people.
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