MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/. All pets belonging to the Hongkongers with confirmed Covid-19 will be quarantined for two weeks, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday quoting Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch of the Centre for Health Protection in Hong Kong.

"... from now on, we will ask the owners to send their pets to the [Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department] for quarantine just to make sure they are not infected," the specialist said.

Earlier on Friday, the Hong Kong authorities reported the first case in which the virus was possibly passed from a human to a pet. Preliminary tests showed symptoms of the disease in the dog belonging to a man earlier diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.

As of now, 94 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Hong Kong. Two people have died.

On December 31, 2019, Chinese health officials reported a cluster of cases of acute respiratory illness to the World Health Organization in Wuhan, an economic and industrial metropolis with a population of 11 million. The virus - now named COVID-19 (2019-nCoV), otherwise known as the novel coronavirus - was identified on January 7, 2020.

Apart from China, 50 countries, including Russia, have reported confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the latest data, the overall number of people who contracted the novel coronavirus in China has exceeded 78,800, as many as 2,788 people have died and over 36,100 have recovered.

The World Health Organization has declared it a public health emergency of international concern, describing it as an epidemic with multiple locations.