VIRUS PANIC
Coronavirus – Passengers ‘in five-hour stand-off after REFUSING to share a plane with people from bug-hit Wuhan’
TERRIFIED passengers REFUSED to share a plane with travellers from bug-hit Wuhan amid fears that they might contract deadly coronavirus.
More than 70 passengers from Shanghai were reportedly locked in a five-hour stand-off after realising 16 people from Wuhan were on their flight from Japan.
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Wuhan is under quarantine with air and rail departures suspended and roads closed, while several other cities have imposed travel bans.
The city's mayor has said about five million people have already left the city ahead of the Chinese New Year holidays and before the lockdown was in place.
While waiting to board the 9.25am flight from Nagoya to Shanghai yesterday, more than 70 passengers from Shanghai refused to board the China Southern Airlines flight.
They became hostile to the Wuhan residents after recognising their accents, the Asian News Agency reported.
After a tense stand-off, all the passengers were eventually allowed to board the plane - and it landed in Shanghai Pudong International Airport five hours later than scheduled.
Sun Online have contacted the airline for a response.
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It comes as the death toll climbed to 106, up from 81 on Monday.
The number of total confirmed cases in China has surged to 4,515, the National Health Commission said.
On Monday, authorities in Beijing confirmed a 50-year-old man had died - the first fatality in the Chinese capital from the virus.
The virus has spread across China and to at least 16 countries globally.
Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine for coronavirus which is thought to spread into the human population from an infected animal at a market in Wuhan.
Public health officials from the US and China have warned people to expect many more infections, and there have been unconfirmed claims from anonymous health workers in China that many thousands more than their government is acknowledging could already be infected.
The epidemic has revived memories of the SARS outbreak that originated in China and killed nearly 800 as it spread around the world in 2002 and 2003.
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Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, said his "best guess" was that 100,000 people had been infected with the virus.
Authorities in China have cancelled a host of events marking Chinese New Year as they expand their measures against the virus.
Beijing and Shanghai have now introduced a 14-day observation period from people arriving from Hubei.
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