UK, France urge citizens out of China; Belgium sees 1st case

London — Britain on Tuesday urged all of its citizens in China to leave country because of outbreak of a respiratory illness from a new virus, while Belgium became latest nation to anunce a confirmed case.

An updated visory issued by U.K. Foreign Office said that while commercial flights remained available from most of mainland China, travel restrictions introduced by Chinese government to contain epidemic meant "it may become harder to access departure options over coming weeks.

“If you're in China and able to leave, you should do so,” visory said.

France also issued an visory, warning against any n-essential travel to China and suggesting that French citizens who were alrey re return home.

More than 20,400 people have been infected with virus in China and 425 have died. Two or people have died in Philippines and Hong Kong and 20 or nations have reported cases.

Belgium, meanwhile, reported its first case of coronavirus, found in one of nine citizens who were repatriated from Wuhan over weekend. Belgian Health Ministry said infected individual was in good health and didn't show any symptoms of disease. person was taken to a special hospital for furr care while ors remained under observation.

Germany confirmed two more cases of virus: one an employee of an auto parts company that a Chinese colleague visited two weeks ago and or in a child of an infected company employee who previously h ar child test positive.

In all, Europe h 28 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday: Germany has 12; France six; Russia, Italy and U.K have two each and Finland, Sweden, Spain and Belgium have one each.

European Union's medicines ncy said it was taking action to “accelerate development and availability” of medicines to treat and prevent virus.

Amsterdam-based ncy is responsible for evaluating, supervising and monitoring medicines in 27-nation bloc.

It said in a statement that while re are currently medicines authorized to detect, treat of prevent infections with new virus it is “rey to support medicine developers with all available regulatory tools to vance and expedite development of effective measures to fight and prevent spre of this virus.”

Italy could lose up to 4.5 billion euros ($4.97 billion) in tourism revenue this year if coronavirus fears keep visitors away, leing polling ncy Demoskopika said in a study released Tuesday. amount represents around 5% of tourism-generated contribution to Italy's gross domestic product.

Fueling those fears, four regional Italian goverrs from anti-migrant League party formally asked health ministry to require school- children from China to undergo 14 days of observation before being allowed back to class.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte, however, demanded an end to such discriminatory reactions and Italy's National Health Institute insisted that its precautionary measures for school- children were sufficient.

Russian Defense Ministry said first of five military transport aircraft assigned to airlift Russians left Wuhan on Tuesday night with 80 evacuees. Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said earlier in day that 132 Russians and 15 citizens of or ex-Soviet nations in all would be flown out of Wuhan and quarantined in southwestern Siberia.

Russian President Vlimir Putin urged Chinese authorities to work hard to halt outbreak.

“I hope that our Chinese friends will overcome difficult situation with hor. We all want results of fight against new virus to be as efficient and quick as possible," Putin said Tuesday at a meeting with students and researchers.

Dr. David Heymann, who led World Health Organization's response to SARS outbreak, said it's too early to tell when virus outbreak will peak but that it appears disease is still on increase. He said exponential spike in China's caselo in recent days was partly attributable to fact that Chinese officials expanded ir search to include milder cases, t only people with pneumonia.