The respiratory virus has claimed 17 lives since emerging from a seafood and animal market in Wuhan, infected hundreds of other people nationwide and been detected as far away as the US. All of Huanggang’s movie theaters and Internet cafes, as well as the central market, were to shut down. A third city, Ezhou, with a population of 1.1 million, announced that its train station had been temporarily closed earlier in the day. The 17 people who died in China were aged 48 to 89 and had pre-existing health conditions, Chinese health authorities said yesterday. Animals are suspected to be the primary source of the outbreak, with Chinese health officials saying that the virus originated from the market, where wild animals were illegally sold.
