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Kazakh prime minister orders to suspend visa-free entry for Chinese transit passengers

Askar Mamin ordered to stop business trips to China and recommended refraining from private and tourist trips

© Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

NUR-SULTAN, January 26. /TASS/. Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Askar Mamin has ordered his government to take measures on suspending 72-hour visa-free entry for Chinese transit passengers amid pneumonia outbreak caused by novel coronavirus, the prime minister’s press service said on Sunday.

The prime minister also ordered to stop business trips to China and recommended refraining from private and tourist trips.

In addition, the head of government instructed medical facilities to prepare for providing assistance in case of deteriorating situation. Other measures include intensified sanitary and epidemiological and migration control at checkpoints on the state border, at the facilities of air, automobile and railroad transport and medical monitoring over all persons arriving in China, the decree reads.

The prime minister also called for providing consular and any other assistance to Kazak nationals currently staying in China. If needed, Kazakh students and other nationals residing in Wuhan should be immediately evacuated, he noted.

The outbreak of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV was registered in late December last year in a big central Chinese city of Wuhan. Now the number of confirmed cases of disease has reached 2,027 and the death toll has hit 57. The coronavirus has been registered in nearly all Chinese regions, including in Beijing and Shanghai.

Coronavirus cases have also been reported in Australia, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Thailand, France and Japan. The World Health Organization has recognized the virus outbreak as a national emergency for China but has so far refrained from declaring it a global health emergency.

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