Russia shuts border with China in five regions
Russia will be closing the pedestrian and vehicle border crossings with the far eastern regions of China and all nearly railway communication with China until March 1, said Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova on Wednesday after a session of the operation headquarters for preventing the new corona virus from being brought into Russia.
According to Golikova, a decision has been made to extend the temporary closure of the pedestrian and vehicle borders for a longer time period. This will apply to five regions: the Amur Oblast, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, as well as Khabarovsk, Primorsky and Zabaykalsky Krai.
Initially the border was shut in only three of them – the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kabarovsk Krain and the Amur Oblast.
Furthermore, as of January 31, all railway communication with China will be suspended, with a single exception – the Moscow-Beijing express train.
“As for air traffic, we have agreed that over the next two days, the Ministry of Transport and the Foreign Ministry will assess the situation surrounding the number of our citizens who are returning to Russia, and afterwards a decision will be made regarding the regime of flights from China and to China,” said Golikova, as cited by Interfax.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will be holding a new emergency session on Thursday to decide whether or not to declare the outbreak of viral pneumonia a global emergency, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced at a press conference on Wednesday.
At the previous session on January 23, the WHO chose not to declare a global emergency. Since then, the number of cases has grown by a factor of 11, and the death toll has passed the 130 mark. Apart from China, another 15 countries have recorded cases of the virus.
The WHO is particularly concerned by the signs of the corona virus being passed from person to person in three countries which could potentially become new epicenters of an epidemic, Ghebreyesus noted, referring to Vietnam, Germany and Japan.
“Seeing the transmission from person to person in the three countries, we are convening the emergency committee again in order to understand what this means,” he added.