Authorities in the Chinese city of Wuhan have been ordered to round up everyone with the deadly coronavirus and send them to mass quarantine camps.
The drastic move came as Chinese state television reported the number of deaths in Hubei province from the virus rose by 69 to 618 late on Thursday.
A further 2447 cases have been detected in Hubei, the epicentre of the lethal outbreak, taking the total in the region to 22,112.
With the infection and death toll rising every day, Sun Chunlan, a vice-premier who is leading Beijing’s response to the outbreak has told city investigators to go house to house to check the temperatures of all residents and interview close contacts of anyone infected with the virus.
“Set up a 24-hour duty system. During these wartime conditions, there must be no deserters, or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever,” Ms Sun said, according to reports in The New York Times.
Also on Thursday, it was confirmed that a whistleblowing doctor who was reprimanded for “spreading rumours” about the coronavirus before it was officially recognised has died.
Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at a hospital in Wuhan, was one of eight people reprimanded by police last month for spreading “illegal and false” information about the coronavirus. Dr Li had been hospitalised with the virus since January 12, and died on Friday morning, according to the hospital where he worked.
He was one of 635 people to die from nearly 31,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The cases include 15 in Australia: Five in Queensland, four each in NSW and Victoria and two in South Australia.
Japanese health officials have also confirmed 61 passengers, including two Australians, have tested positive for the virus on a cruise ship anchored off the port of Yokohama.
About 3700 people, including more than 200 Australians, face at least a fortnight quarantined on the Diamond Princess.
On Friday, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned Australians against travelling to China as the coronavirus continued to spread.
The federal government’s official advice is avoid travel to China. But Mr Dutton said some people were ignoring that advice and “putting themselves in a difficult situation”.
“They would find it very hard to get back to Australia in certain circumstances and you can’t guarantee their return, particularly if China shuts its borders,” he told the Nine Network on Friday.
Australian diplomats are working with Chinese officials to allow another evacuation flight from Wuhan.
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison said people should not assume further flights will be possible, whether from Wuhan or mainland China.
“DFAT is now in the process of registering our intention to undertake a second chartered flight,” he told parliament on Thursday.
The government is also making plans about what to do if the outbreak continues and the quarantine facility set up on Christmas Island reaches its 1200-person capacity.
There are 278 Australians in the island’s former detention centre – one large group that came on the first evacuation flight out of Wuhan and a second, smaller, group who arrived via a New Zealand evacuation flight. None are suspected to have coronavirus.
Mr Morrison said defence officials were working to identify mainland sites to take any overflow, with hotels and mines as possible solutions.
One of the sites being considered is a former mining workers’ village in Darwin. It was being assessed by federal government officials on Friday.
The former Inpex workers’ village housed 3500 workers at the height of construction of its $55 billion gas plant on Darwin Harbour.
-with AAP
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