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China coronavirus: Premier Li Keqiang orders Wuhan hospitals to admit patients as city struggles to cope
- Li visits patients and medical staff and says 2,000 more nurses will be sent in days
- Mayor Zhou Xianwang says he and local party chief willing to step down to assuage public anger
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has ordered authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan – the epicentre of a deadly coronavirus outbreak – to ensure that all patients with the illness are admitted to hospital, as countries around the world impose travel restrictions and start pulling their citizens out of the city.
Li inspected efforts to contain the outbreak in Wuhan on Monday, as the death toll rose to 82. So far all of the fatalities have been in mainland China, where there are also more than 2,800 confirmed cases.
The head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also arrived in Beijing on Monday to discuss ways to slow the spread.
Top Chinese leaders are scrambling to ensure that preventive measures are adequately implemented to minimise the risk of further expansion in an outbreak that has already seriously disrupted public life, and even politics.
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Yunnan province and the city of Qingdao in Shandong province have cancelled annual legislative meetings planned for February, just weeks before the National People’s Congress was expected to convene in Beijing in March.
Li – who is heading the high-level group charged with fighting the outbreak – visited patients and medical personnel, while also directing virus prevention work in the city.
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Inspecting the construction site of a temporary hospital that will have up to 1,000 beds, Li said China was racing against time to curb the coronavirus, which has spread to other countries and all parts of China with the exception of Tibet.
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