Hong Kong leaders announced closing 10 of 13 border gates with mainland China to prevent the corona virus from spreading.

Hong Kong Special Zone Chief Carrie Lam announced his decision to close 10 border gates with mainland China from this afternoon, but did not specify a deadline and rejected the possibility of blocking the entire route connecting to mainland China for giving that it is an act "discriminatory, inappropriate and unrealistic".

However, Ms. Lam also asserted "do not rule out stronger measures if the situation changes", and acknowledged the special zone is facing scarcity of masks.

Hong Kong has 15 cases of infection with new strain of coronavirus (nCoV) causing acute pneumonia. Many of them returned from mainland China, where an outbreak began in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, leaving 362 dead and more than 17,000 infected.

The Hong Kong government's move did not alleviate public anger when it said that Beijing was not as transparent about the pneumonia epidemic as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002. Mainland China The first also concealed SARS, a disease that killed nearly 300 people in Hong Kong.

About 13,400 mainland Chinese entered Hong Kong on February 1, down from 27,800 three days before the city closed some gates. More than 100,000 Hong Kongers also return every day from the mainland. Hong Kong has taken a series of precautionary measures, such as denying entry to people from affected areas, closing recreational facilities, extending school holidays and allowing civil servants to work. at home.