China ready to help Seoul, Tokyo over virus

China's foreign ministry on Thursday said Beijing was willing to do everything it could to help Seoul and Tokyo deal with the new virus, as the number of cases outside China exceeded, for the first time, the number inside the country.

"We share a collective destiny in the face of the epidemic," said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"We are willing to improve and strengthen the emergency response mechanism with South Korea and Japan, to strengthen communication and coordination of epidemic prevention, exchange epidemic information, exchange prevention and control experience and technology, and carry out cooperation in the fields of diagnosis and treatment programs, drug and vaccine research and development," Zhao told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

China on Thursday reported 433 more cases of the new coronavirus along with 29 additional deaths.

Thursday's updates brings mainland China's total to 78,497 cases, and 2,744 deaths.

With the illness pushing its way into a sixth continent and the number of sick and dead rising, the crisis has given way to political and diplomatic rows, concern that bordered on panic in some quarters, and a sense that no part of the world was immune to the disease’s spread.

Worries over the ever-expanding economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis multiplied, with factories idled, trade routes frozen and tourism crippled, while a growing list of nations braced for the illness to breach their borders.

Korea and Japan are two of the countries hard-hit by the virus, along with Italy, Iran, and China.

Zhao said China was prepared to provide test kits and other medical supplies to the Japanese, and added that local governments and companies in China were providing assistance to Korean areas hit by the epidemic.

The Chinese government has faced criticism by its own citizens over indications that various departments suppressed critical early information about the viral outbreak, allowing it to fester and spread widely.

But state media have in recent weeks trumpeted Beijing as having taken resolute actions against the epidemic and are now urging other countries to learn from its experience fighting the virus.