MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Seven Chinese citizens have been transported from a hotel in northern Moscow to an infectious diseases hospital on suspicion of carrying an acute viral respiratory illness, a representative for the Russian capital's emergency services said on Saturday.

“Seven Chinese citizens have been transferred from the Art Voykovskaya hotel to an infectious diseases hospital,” the representative said.

Later, a spokesperson of the Moscow health department said that the Chinese citizens hospitalised in Moscow amid fears of them having contracted the new coronavirus strain are in satisfactory condition with no symptoms of pneumonia.

"There are no signs of a complicated course of acute respiratory viral infection, pneumonia in particular, in the patients. The hospitalisation was carried out as an additional measure of monitoring and examining the condition of the patients," a spokesperson for the Moscow health department said in the early hours of Sunday.

According to the spokesperson, special measures were taken with respect to the patients because they had arrived from China, where the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise, with the current death toll from the disease standing at over 40 people.

"An ambulance went to the place of residence of the tourists [hotel in Moscow] primarily because they had arrived from China. Usually, in such cases, an ambulance gives advice by phone. Doctors examined all the people and analyzed their complaints on the spot," the spokesperson said.

According to the spokesperson, the lives of the hospitalised Chinese nationals are not in danger and there is no grounds for concerns about a possible exacerbation of the epidemiological situation in the Russian capital.

Meanwhile, the Russian Health Ministry said that seven cases of coronavirus disease, one of which was lethal, were registered in the Chinese regions located along the Russian border.

Governments across the world are on high-alert amid an outbreak of a new form of viral coronavirus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was first reported in late December. According to the latest official data, more than 1,300 people have been infected, with 41 people dying as a result of contracting the virus.

The so-called Wuhan coronavirus belongs to the same family of coronaviruses that caused SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which also originated in China in 2002 and resulted in the deaths of about 800 people all over the globe.