China extends holiday to contain virus as death toll rises

Source: AP

By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) — China on Monday expanded sweeping efforts to contain a viral disease by extending the Lunar New Year holiday to keep the public at home and avoid spreading infection as the death toll rose to 81.

Hong Kong announced it would bar entry to visitors from the province at the center of the outbreak following a warning the virus’s ability to spread was growing. Travel agencies were ordered to cancel group tours nationwide, adding to the rising economic cost.

Increasingly drastic anti-disease efforts began with the Jan. 22 suspension of plane, train and bus links to Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China where the virus was first detected last month. That lockdown has expanded to a total of 17 cities with more than 50 million people in the most far-reaching disease-control measures ever imposed.

The end of the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s busiest travel season, was pushed back to Sunday from Thursday to “reduce mass gatherings” and “block the spread of the epidemic,” a Cabinet statement said.



Paramilitary police wear face masks as they stand guard at Tiananmen Gate adjacent to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. China on Monday expanded sweeping efforts to contain a viral disease by postponing the end of this week's Lunar New Year holiday to keep the public at home and avoid spreading infection. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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