HONG KONG — Eunice Chan, a physician in Hong Kong, removes her face mask only to shower, eat and drink.

At dinner time, when her three daughters, ages 7, 9 and 12, gather around the dining table, she takes her meal in another room.

“There’s no more hugging, no more kissing,” she said. “This is especially difficult for my youngest daughter.”

Her self-imposed isolation is not unwarranted. In Hong Kong, there have been two deaths and 68 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. And the semiautonomous Chinese city shares a porous border with the mainland, where 104 people on average have died of the disease every day since Feb. 1.