Government suspends all visas and e-visas from these five countries

Delhi: A day after two fresh cases of the novel coronavirus was detected in the country, the Union Health Ministry Tuesday issued advisory suspending all regular visas and e-visas granted on or before March 3 to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea, Japan who have not yet entered India.

After a person was tested positive for coronavirus in the Delhi-NCR region, two schools in Noida are being fumigated, one of which is where the children of the patient study. The patient, who hosted a birthday party last Friday, was put under observation. On the other hand, six suspected cases, who came in contact with the Delhi patient have been quarantined in Agra.

In India, the number of coronavirus cases rose to five after two new infections were detected — one in Delhi and the other in Hyderabad. Both the cases, self-reported — health officials have started contacting the patients’ family members and colleagues to trace who they came in contact with, including crew members of the Air India flight who have been asked to remain in isolation at their homes for 14 days. The new cases mark the first instance in the country of the virus being reported from outside Kerala, where three students returning from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the heart of the outbreak, were found to have been infected. All three — the first case was reported on January 30 — have been discharged from hospitals after treatment.

Meanwhile, China’s coronavirus caseload continued to wane Tuesday even as the epidemic took a firmer hold beyond Asia, with three countries now exceeding 1,000 cases and the US reporting its sixth death. Clusters of disease grew in South Korea, Italy and Iran, and the virus has turned up for the first time in New York, Moscow and Berlin, as well as Latvia, Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Jordan, and Portugal. The worldwide death toll topped 3,000, and the number of cases tops 89,000 in about 70 countries.