Tewolde told media over the weekend that the airline had been flying to China since 1973 and it would not be ethical to suspend flights to the country.

“It will not be morally acceptable to stop flying to China today because they have a temporary problem,” he said, adding that the airline would stand with its “Chinese brothers and sisters”.

His remarks came days after Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta put pressure on the Ethiopian government – which wholly owns Ethiopian Airlines – to halt flights to China, citing the need to curb the spread of the virus into the East African region.

Speaking during a visit to Washington last week, Kenyatta – who is keen to court both China and the US – insisted that Kenya’s decision to suspend flights from Guangzhou to Nairobi was not political.

He said most African countries had weak health systems that would make it harder to handle the outbreak, so preventing its spread – even if through extreme measures such as grounding flights – was the only option.

“Our worry as a country is not that China cannot manage the disease. Our biggest worry is diseases coming into areas with weaker health systems like ours,” Kenyatta said while addressing members of US think tank the Atlantic Council.

But Ethiopian Airlines said it would continue flying to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong and was taking measures to protect staff and passengers. Ethiopia receives about 1,500 visitors from mainland China every day.

According to Tewolde, if the airline halted its Chinese services, China and Africa would be completely disconnected.

“No one in Ethiopian Airlines would like to see this,” he said. “We have to take maximum precautions, but stopping flights is not one of them.”

He added: “Even if we stop flying, people will continue to come to Ethiopia through Singapore, Malaysia, Europe. The transmission of the disease will be dangerously hidden … British Airways stopped flying to China for its economic reasons. But Chinese carriers are flying to the UK.”

In a separate statement, the carrier said China was “one of the strongest and one of the oldest markets for Ethiopian Airlines”.

“We have been connecting the great Chinese nation with the entire continent of African for almost half a century and it is our growth strategy,” the airline said, adding that it would continue operating in the five cities in compliance with international aviation and health guidelines.

Aside from seeking to shore up revenues, analysts noted that the airline was under tight state control, and Ethiopia would be reluctant to do anything that might harm its strong bilateral ties with China.

Ethiopia is among the nations on the continent with the highest number of Chinese immigrants. Most of them are workers involved in the construction of infrastructure projects including ports, railways, dams, bridges and malls. Those projects have been financed with billions of dollars in loans from China – Ethiopia is reportedly among the biggest recipients of Chinese lending in Africa.

Last year, China was forced to restructure Ethiopia’s debt after the latter edged closer to defaulting on a loan from Beijing for its standard gauge railway.

Ethiopia, Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Zambia together accounted for nearly 60 per cent of all Chinese workers on the continent at the end of 2017, according to a study by Johns Hopkins University.

Ethiopia is also a major recipient of direct foreign investment from China.