U.S., Japan pull nationals from China as virus toll jumps – ZAWYA

U.S., Japan pull nationals from China as virus toll jumps – ZAWYA

BEIJING/SHANGHAI - The United States and Japan evacuated their nationals from a quarantined city while British Airways suspended flights to mainland China as deaths from a fast-spreading new virus leapt to 132 and the first cases emerged in the Middle East.. I was extremely worried that I was stuck there," said Takeo Aoyama, who arrived in Tokyo on a chartered plane carrying 206 Japanese out of Wuhan, with more flights planned.. But in what could be a major step towards taming the disease, scientists in Australia said they had developed a lab-grown version of the coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside China.. U.S. officials said the White House was weighing whether to suspend flights to China.. The number of cases in China now exceeds its tally of 5,327 infected with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus that killed about 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.. About 60 cases, but no deaths, have been reported in 15 other countries, including the United States, France and Singapore.. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) diagnosed four members of a Chinese family who arrived from Wuhan with the coronavirus..