"There is no need for alarm and the risk to the Australian public from this novel coronavirus remains relatively low," Brendan Murphy told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. "Although, we do need to keep a precautionary and active surveillance of the situation." A notice for passengers from Wuhan, China, near a quarantine station at Japan's Narita airport. Credit:Getty Images Professor Murphy said the screening procedures were being implemented "because Australia has a significant number of international travellers" and would begin on Thursday, two days before Chinese New Year. He said it was not known how easily the virus could be transmitted from human-to-human, as compared with animal-to-human, after Chinese media revealed overnight that health workers had been infected and that cases of the virus had been recorded in Beijing and Guangdong province.

On Tuesday morning local time, health authorities in Wuhan confirmed a fourth person had died from pneumonia following the coronavirus outbreak in the city. Airlines had declared "a number" of ill passengers under normal biosecurity protocols and state health authorities had assessed them, Professor Murphy said, but none had been confirmed as coronavirus cases. He said anyone who experienced symptoms after entering Australia should "seek medical attention". Professor Murphy said the decision to rely on self disclosure was based on evidence that screening passengers by taking their temperature at the border was "ineffective" and gave people a "false sense of security", saying the virus had an incubation period of one week. "In the flu pandemic, it missed a large number of cases," he said.

Biosecurity information about the virus was also being provided to travellers at all other ports of entry to Australia, he said. Professor Murphy said he was working with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on potentially updating travel advice to warn Australians travelling to Wuhan to "avoid markets with live animals". A health surveillance officer monitors passengers arriving at the Hong Kong International airport. Credit:AP South Korea also confirmed its first case of the virus in a Chinese woman who flew from Wuhan to Incheon airport on Sunday. Three cases were earlier reported in Thailand and Japan. The new coronavirus has also spread to more Chinese cities, with two cases reported in the capital Beijing and one in Shenzen.

At least half a dozen countries in Asia have begun screening programs, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also started screening passengers arriving from Wuhan at three airports. A woman wears a mask at a subway station in Wuhan, where the number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has jumped sharply. Credit:Getty Images "Australia has well-established mechanisms to detect and respond to ill travellers, and processes in place to add to these if risk increases," Professor Murphy said. Early cases of the virus, known as 2019-nCoV, were first linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down. However, the World Health Organisation and other health authorities have now noted there is evidence of limited human-to-human transmission of the disease. In Wuhan alone, there have been about 200 cases of 2019-nCoV, with 136 of those detected on the weekend.

Medical staff transfer patients to hospital in Wuhan. Credit:Getty Images Meanwhile, the head of a Chinese government expert team, Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert, confirmed two people in Guangdong province in southern China caught the virus from family members, state media said. Some medical workers have also tested positive for the virus, the English-language China Daily newspaper said. Associate Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott, from the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, said while authorities were "operating in the dark to a certain degree", there was no evidence of "widespread human-to-human transmission". "Otherwise we'd be seeing a large number of cases, far beyond what we've currently got." Professor Murphy said he met with his state and territory counterparts in the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee to discuss Australia's response to the new virus on Monday afternoon.

"The department is also actively discussing the matter with the Department of Agriculture, which manages Australia’s biosecurity at the border, including human health, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which manages travel advice through Smartraveller," he said. Loading Chinese authorities said the outbreak was "still preventable and controllable" and added it would increase monitoring over the Lunar New Year period that starts this week, to reassure the public as hundreds of millions of people prepare to travel before the country's biggest annual holiday. The novel coronavirus is notable because of similarities with the one that sparked Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, 17 years ago. Unlike SARS, which killed almost 800 people, the 2019-nCov isn't known to have spread to health workers. "The source of the new type of coronavirus has not been found, we do not fully understand how the virus is transmitted, and changes in the virus still need to be closely monitored," China's National Health Commission said on Sunday.