Footage has emerged of a coronavirus patient sealed inside a plastic tube to stop the killer disease from spreading.
The chilling clip shows the patient being wheeled into a hospital in Huizhou, in south China's Guangdong Province, by medical wearing hazmat suits.
It comes as China confirmed 571 total cases of the new coronvirus outbreak. As of Wednesday evening, 17 deaths have been reported, all in Hubei province.
Around 20 medical workers have also been infected.
The previously unknown coronavirus strain is believed to have emerged late last year from illegally traded wildlife at an animal market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
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Cases have been detected as far away as the United States, stoking fears the virus is already spreading worldwide.
There are eight other known cases around the world – Thailand has confirmed four cases, while the United States, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have each reported one.
In an effort to stop the virus from spreading, Wuhan's local government said it would shut down all urban transport networks and suspend outgoing flights from the city as of 10am on Thursday, state media reported.
The government is urging citizens to not leave the city in the absence of special circumstances.
Contrasting with its secrecy over the 2002-03 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 800 people, China's communist government has this time given regular updates to try to avoid panic as millions of people travel for the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.
Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said during a visit to Wuhan that authorities needed to be open about the spread of the virus and their efforts to contain it, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
After a meeting at its Geneva headquarters on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it would decide on Thursday whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, which would step up the international response.
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If it does so, it will be the sixth international public health emergency to be declared in the last decade.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva that China's actions so far were "very strong" but called in Beijing to take "more and significant measures to limit or minimise the international spread".
"We stressed to them that by having a strong action not only they will control the outbreak in their country but they will also minimise the chances of this outbreak spreading internationally. So they recognise that," he said.
A senior U.S. State Department official also called on China to "play a bigger role in global health so they taking more and significant measures to limit or minimise the international spread".
"The lack of transparency in the past, especially with SARS… gives us concern that that may be the case here," the official said, adding however that there were "positive signs that they have taken action in Wuhan".
Meanwhile, the UK Government announced all direct flights from the city into Heathrow would be subject to enhanced monitoring while the Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to the city.
There are three direct flights a week from Wuhan in China to Heathrow Airport, landing at around 6pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Under the new measures, it was planned that planes would be taken to an isolated area of terminal four.
The captain of each flight would then tell passengers during landing to let a flight attendant know if they feel unwell, and these details would then be passed on to public health teams at the airport who would carry out further checks.
However passengers arriving at Heathrow on Wednesday night very little had been done to screen them.
Despite some saying that there were doctors on-hand to screen passengers, it seems that many exited the plane without being tested.
Many only left the flight with a leaflet listing symptoms and as one passenger pointed out, because it was in English, most of the Chinese people on the flight would not be able to understand it.
Thomas Crosby, 31, who lives in Wuhan and works for Birmingham City University, said "basically nothing happened" as he walked through the main arrivals gate at Heathrow's Terminal 4.
"At Wuhan we got checked on the forehead with a little device at the train station, just because we had taken a train randomly before.
"We weren't screened at all at the airport in Wuhan.
"On arrival here we got a leaflet and that was it – and it's not in Chinese either, so I don't know if that really helps Chinese passengers.
"When we landed there was an English girl next to me, and she found out what was going on from the news on her phone.
"To be honest, nothing happened. Not even any real checks at passport control."
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