China is banning all foreign visitors, even if they have residence permits, under a new temporary restriction to curb the coronavirus spread.

It comes after Hong Kong also banned all non-residents from entering the territory.

Chinese and foreign airlines will also be limited to one flight a week, and planes must not be more than three-quarters full.

The country where the virus originated at the end of last year introduced strict lockdown measures on residents, managing to reduce significantly the spread of the disease, reporting almost all its new cases now coming from abroad.

However, China’s first locally transmitted coronavirus case for three days was reported on Friday, and the country still has nearly 82,000 cases with numbers slowly rising, according to official figures.