- China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, warned against “rumours and panic” and called on the UK government to support.

- There were warnings that Hong Kong’s economy risked being plunged deeper into recession as the virus wrought havoc in the territory, with consumers panic-buying staple goods and airlines stopping flights

- Hospitals in Wuhan said they were struggling to find enough beds for thousands of newly infected patients

- Two docked cruise ships with thousands of passengers and crew members remained under 14-day quarantines in Hong Kong and Japan . Japan reported 10 more infections among passengers aboard the luxury cruise liner Diamond Princess, which is quarantined outside Yokohama

- President Xi Jinping declared a “people’s war” against the virus as companies worldwide warned of the impact on business

- The number of cases in Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, is now 22,112

- More than 28,000 people have now contracted the virus. The vast majority of cases are in China. Chinese state television today reported the death toll to have risen by 69 to 618 people. All deaths from the virus have so far been in mainland China with the exception of one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

- The doctor who tried to raise the alarm about coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan died after contracting the disease. Early reports of the death of Li Wenliang were retracted, only for the doctor to succumb later in the day

It is understood that police officers were used to seal off a section of the hospital in Derry tonight where a suspected case of coronavirus is being investigated. A mother and baby have been put into quarantine where they have been tested for symptoms of the virus. The hospital however remains open to all other patients with no one being discouraged to turn up to Altnagelvin.

An Italian citizen has tested positive for coronavirus. The 29-year-old man was among the 56 Italians repatriated from Wuhan on Monday and quarantined at a military facility near Rome. Italy’s higher health council confirmed that the man had tested positive for the virus and is being treated at Rome’s Lazzaro Spallanzani institute for infectious diseases. This is the third confirmed coronavirus case in Italy. A Chinese couple, who arrived in Italy on 23 January, are also being treated at the Spallanzani hospital.

An investigation at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry, Northern Ireland, is under way tonight over a suspected case of coronavirus involving a mother and baby. It is understood that the mother and child recently returned to the city from Hong Kong and reported to Derry’s main hospital A&E department earlier today. Northern Ireland’s Public Health Agency said they “are not commenting on individual cases at the moment”. A spokesperson for the PHA said no cases had yet been diagnosed in Northern Ireland.

So far there have been no confirmed coronavirus cases in Brazil, but health authorities are preparing themselves for its arrival.

As millions of Brazilians prepare to take to the streets for their country’s annual carnival, Brazil’s health minister has said his country currently has no specific plans for a coronavirus awareness campaign. But Luiz Henrique Mandetta has called on Brazilian revellers to exercise “respiratory etiquette” when the festivities kick off later this month. “What we are suggesting is respiratory etiquette,” he told reporters, according to the Valor Econômico newspaper, Brazil’s answer to the FT. “Wash your hands several times a day; if you sneeze, put your elbow out in front.”

On what has been a day of fast-moving developments, here is a round-up of the key events from the Guardian’s Sarah Boseley, Denis Campbell and Simon Murphy.

My colleague Emma Graham-Harrison has written this profile of Li Wenliang and his role in raising the alarm about coronavirus.

“We profoundly regret and mourn this death,” the Wuhan City central hospital said in a brief statement on its official social media account.

The whistleblowing Chinese doctor who tried to raise the alarm about the coronavirus outbreak died in the early hours of Friday, a Communist party-controlled newspaper has now confirmed. Li Wenliang, 34, was declared dead at 2.58am on Friday after “emergency treatment” at a hospital in Wuhan, the Global Times reported, following hours of confusion over the ill doctor’s fate. Earlier reports of his death had triggered an outpouring of grief and anger in Chinese social media, with many hailing Li’s decision to speak out over the virus despite the risks of doing so in his authoritarian country. The Global Times was among the heavily controlled state-run newspapers that stepped back from their initial reports of the ophthalmologist‘s death on Thursday.

Once back in Brazil those being evacuated from Wuhan will be placed in quarantine for 18 days at a military base in the city of Anápolis, in Brazil’s midwest. According to the Estado de São Paulo newspaper, Argentina has asked Brazil for help in evacuating 15 of its citizens.

Tom Phillips, our Latin America correspondent, reports that two Brazilian air force jets are on their way to China to rescue a group of about 34 Brazilian citizens from the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak. Brazil’s state-run news agency, Agencia Brasil, says the planes are currently in Poland waiting for clearance from Chinese authorities to continue their flight to Wuhan. The delay is reportedly the result of the high number of international repatriation missions trying to fly into the Chinese city.

My colleague Mario Koran in Oakland reports that four of the 167 passengers aboard a quarantine flight from Wuhan to a Marine Corps air station near San Diego were sent to local hospitals shortly after their plane touched down yesterday morning.



The San Diego Union-Tribune said that none of the American citizens returning to the US showed any symptoms when they boarded the flight, but medical screenings done after their arrival revealed that four people (three adults and one child) showed symptoms that may have been caused by the coronavirus that has caused 25,000 people worldwide to fall ill and killed nearly 500 in China.

So far there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus infection among the passengers; the most recent tally of confirmed cases includes six in California and 11 nationwide.



The San Diego air station is one of three military bases in California being used as a quarantine site. Three additional bases outside California are also designated quarantine locations.



While the common flu remains a more significant threat to public health in the United States, the novel nature of the coronavirus has fuelled global attention, writes the Union-Tribune.



Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that experts are warning the travel restrictions issued by the Trump administration and quarantine of roughly 200 people in California — the first mass quarantine in the US in more than 50 years — may backfire.



A quarantine can be counterproductive if it appears to be overly strict and broad and diminishes the public’s trust in authorities, one expert told Sam Levin, adding that the government should use the “least restrictive” options available and not “limit people’s rights and liberty to a greater extent than is necessary”.



“We should do the utmost to protect public health. But we have to make sure the measures we’re implementing aren’t worse than the virus itself,” Jennifer Nuzzo, the senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Levin.



Updated at 13.23 EDT