“The contract calls for the Games to be held within 2020. That could be interpreted as allowing a postponement,” Seiko Hashimoto said in response to a lawmaker’s question in parliament.

Under the hosting agreement, the right to cancel the Games belongs to the IOC. Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, last week said his organisation was “fully committed” to holding the Tokyo Olympics on schedule despite the coronavirus spread.

Hashimoto said Japan’s government and Tokyo were still committed to hosting the sporting event, due to begin on July 24.

“We are doing all we can to ensure that the Games go ahead as planned,” she told parliament.

Any halt to the Games would be costly.

Italy restaurant common link for new Zhejiang cases

China's eastern province of Zhejiang confirmed an additional seven imported cases of the disease, all from Italy, on Tuesday – one day after lowering its emergency response level for Covid-19 to “low risk”.

The new cases were all connected to a 31-year-old woman who had arrived in Shanghai from Milan on Thursday, and whose infection was confirmed on Monday. Shanghai health authorities said six of the latest cases had been travelling with the woman, via Moscow. They had no symptoms when they entered China and took a hired car to Zhejiang.

The seventh person had worked with the woman and the six other infected people at the same restaurant in Italy and had transited through Germany on the journey from Milan to Shanghai.

Shanghai will require everyone entering the city from countries with “relatively serious virus conditions” to quarantine themselves for 14 days, an official said on Tuesday. The rule will apply to everyone, regardless of nationality.

Shanghai’s announcement follows a similar move by authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The government-backed Nanfang Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday that new arrivals from countries and regions with severe coronavirus outbreaks must quarantine themselves for 14 days.

The report did not specify which countries were targeted, but said the measure was part of Guangdong’s efforts to strengthen health policy in view of how the epidemic was spreading outside China.

EU raises coronavirus risk level to ‘high’ as Italy death toll passes 50

Between February 27 and March 1, 1,496 people had entered the province from overseas areas hit hard by the virus, but to date tests had shown none had been infected, the report said. The southern Guangdong city of Shenzhen reported one imported case on Sunday – a person who had travelled from Britain.

Ningxia autonomous region, China's capital Beijing and Guangdong province have previously also reported imported cases.

Whistle-blower doctor’s colleague dies

Dr Mei Zhongming, Wuhan Central Hospital’s deputy director of ophthalmology, died on Tuesday afternoon due to coronavirus infection, according to sources. He was a colleague of Li Wenliang, regarded as the first whistle-blower of the outbreak.

Mei was the key eye surgeon in Wuhan for the “Health Express”, a mobile eye hospital aboard a train for cataract patients in China who cannot afford the operation. It ran with funding donated from Hong Kong and Macau.

One person familiar with the matter said Mei had been in a critical condition for more than a week. “Mei and Li were a team sharing one office. They were infected at about the same time. Mei is the third doctor to die in the hospital during the fight with the coronavirus.”

On Sunday, Wuhan Central Hospital said Dr Jiang Xueqing, 55, its director of thyroid and breast surgery, had died early that morning from the disease.

Hefty fine for Taiwan man who broke quarantine

Taiwan on Tuesday imposed an NT$1 million (US$33,350) fine on a man who defied the island’s home quarantine requirement. He is the first person to be fined so heavily under the regulations brought in to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

The man, identified as Lin Tung-ching, failed to respond to calls from health officials in the northern county of Hsinchu, soon after returning on February 25 from a visit to Beijing, via Xiamen. The local government published his name and asked the public for help in tracing him.

Lin later told police he would observe home quarantine in Taipei, but twice gave them the wrong address. He was tracked and placed in a quarantine centre, in addition to the fine, the health department said.

Taiwan tourism crumbles as coronavirus fears add to mainland restrictions

Pope tests negative for coronavirus

Pope Francis, who cancelled a Lent retreat for the first time in his papacy because he is suffering from a cold, has tested negative for coronavirus, the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported on Tuesday.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said he had no immediate comment on the report. The 83-year-old Roman Catholic leader, who had part of one lung removed because of an illness decades ago, also cancelled most audiences last week.

South Korea declares war on virus

South Korea President Moon Jae-in declared the nation had entered into a “war” against the coronavirus as it reported 851 new cases on Tuesday, bringing total infections to 5,186. Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, Moon announced plans to inject US$25 billion directly or indirectly into the virus response.

Yonhap News Agency reported Moon had ordered all government organisations to shift to a “24-hour emergency situation room system” to bolster readiness to handle quarantine and economy-related measures.

Moon said South Korea’s coronavirus response was in “a critical phase” and added the situation had changed completely with the massive number of infections among followers of a fringe religious group known as Shincheonji, who have accounted for about 60 per cent of confirmed cases.

One member of a group from the Shincheonji sect which visited Wuhan in February has been confirmed to have contracted the disease.

The 600 new cases, which were tallied at midnight on Monday, followed two days of the sharpest daily infections spike in South Korea, with 1,062 on Sunday and 813 on Saturday. The country, which has recorded 28 deaths so far, has the highest number of infections after China.

WHO flies in help for Iran

A team of experts from the World Health Organisation arrived in Tehran on Monday evening to deliver aid and help to contain the coronavirus outbreak in Iran, which has the highest death toll from the epidemic after China.

The United Arab Emirates chartered plane carried medical supplies and protective equipment to support more than 15,000 health care workers and enough laboratory kits to test and diagnose nearly 100,000 people, according to WHO.

“The shipment will help Iran respond faster to [the] coronavirus,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on Twitter.

Coronavirus: Iran to deploy armed forces to combat outbreak as death toll jumps to 77

‘Not yet’ a pandemic: WHO chief

The WHO chief reiterated on Monday that containment of the disease was “feasible” and it had not yet become a global pandemic. “WHO will not hesitate to describe this as a pandemic if that’s what the evidence suggests,” he said.

Tedros said the epidemics in South Korea, Italy, Iran and Japan were the agency’s greatest concern. “We are in unchartered territory. We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures,” he said.

Tedros also confirmed that a WHO staff member in its Iranian office had tested positive for Covid-19 – the disease caused by the new coronavirus – and had a mild case of the illness.

Hokkaido hotbed of infection in Japan?

Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido has become a hotbed of coronavirus infections that may have reached 940 last month – more than 10 times the official figure, according to a scientist.

Hiroshi Nishiura, who specialises in statistical modelling of infectious diseases at Hokkaido University's medical school, based his findings on the number of foreign and domestic travellers who had been infected on the island, as well as passenger volume.

Hokkaido, which declared a state of emergency last week, has 77 confirmed virus cases, about one-quarter of the country’s 976 infections. The Diamond Princess cruise liner, which was quarantined in Yokohama, accounted for 705 of Japan’s cases of the coronavirus.

US screens arrivals from South Korea

Travellers on direct flights to the US from all South Korean airports are receiving multiple screenings, such as temperature checks, before boarding as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Vice-President Mike Pence said on Monday the same measures would be taken with arrivals from Italy within the next 12 hours or so. Over the weekend, the US issued an alert to its citizens to avoid travel to some virus-hit areas of South Korea and Italy.

Pence defends US coronavirus response as contagion spreads

Pence said the risk to the American public remained low and there had been “no recommendation about any limitations on travel within” the US.

The death toll from the disease in the US rose to six on Monday, with Washington state announcing four additional deaths, according to US media.

G7 finance chiefs in early call

The finance ministers and central bank governors from the G7 – the grouping of the world’s seven largest economies – will hold a conference call on Tuesday morning on how to deal with the widening coronavirus outbreak and its economic impact.

World economy risks worst year since 2009 as virus dashes hopes for rebound

The call will be led by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, as the world’s top three central banks look set to take steps to limit the economic damage from the outbreak.

French and Italian sources said the call was set to take place 2 ½ hours before stock markets opened in the US.

Japanese sports fans caught up in ‘racist’ measures

Sports organisations are stepping up their efforts to contain the virus at events, but some measures have been described as racist. The German soccer club Leipzig apologised on Monday to a group of fans from Japan after they were reportedly asked to leave the Red Bull Arena.

Leipzig said security at the stadium “had been instructed to intensify checks regarding the admission of certain groups due to potential risk” – without saying how the perceived risk was calculated. The club said it was trying to contact the Japanese fans to offer them tickets to another home game.

It was not clear how many people were affected or whether security staff had been given new instructions.

Virus stops NBA’s CJ McCollum from signing autographs

In the US, the NBA has told players to avoid high-fiving fans and strangers, and to avoid autographing items offered by fans. A memo sent to teams on Sunday made 10 recommendations aimed at decreasing the risks to players of getting the virus.

Xi, Trump push for speedy treatments

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump on Monday both called for the fast development of drugs or vaccines to treat the new coronavirus.

Trump met with pharmaceutical executives at the White House and, while he did not go into specifics on what measures the government might take to help them, said “a lot of exciting things are happening, and they're happening very rapidly”.

Xi puts focus on long-term virus battle as more countries report cases

Xi visited a military academy in Beijing, as well as Tsinghua University's medical school on the same day. “Fighting this hard battle, China should seize [control of] more core technology with its own intellectual property, make more core products to better protect people’s lives and health, and contribute more to safeguard national and strategic security,” he said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Twitter staff encouraged to work from home

Twitter is “strongly encouraging” its almost 5,000 global employees to work from home due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, the social media company said on Monday. The suggestion was made as part of a blog update one day after Twitter suspended all non-critical travel for its staff.

Twitter advises 5,000 global employees to work from home

Twitter said it was mandatory for employees in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work from home, but that other offices would remain open for those who chose or needed to come in. “We are working to make sure internal meetings, all hands, and other important tasks are optimised for remote participation,” the company wrote on its blog.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg, Reuters and Associated Press