China coronavirus: Hong Kong will ban anyone who has been to Hubei province from entering city, in response to mounting calls to tighten border checks

Hong Kong will ban from midnight the entry of all residents of Hubei and anyone who had visited there in the last 14 days, except for those from the city, the government decided late on Sunday evening in a bid to contain the spread of the coronavirus first detected in the province’s capital, Wuhan.

The move came amid mounting calls for authorities to tighten or shut the border with the mainland as the city reported three more confirmed cases of the infection, raising the total to eight so far.

Macau, meanwhile, further ramped up its measures against the outbreak, announcing that about 1,100 Hubei visitors in the city needed to return to the mainland or be placed in isolation.

The new patients included a Hong Kong resident who was allowed to leave a public hospital after seeing doctors for a dog bite and despite telling staff he had been to Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.

The other new cases involved the husband of a 62-year-old mainland woman who was the third confirmed patient in the city and a Hong Kong woman who had recently visited a Wuhan hospital.

Lam had resisted calls on other border control measures, beyond requiring travellers from across the border to fill up health declaration forms and rejected criticism that the city had been slow to act. The city’s sixth case, a 47-year-old Hongkonger, had been in Wuchang, in Wuhan, from January 16 to 23. He worked in accounts at a wet market, but not the one where the virus originated, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable diseases branch of the Centre for Health Protection, said in an afternoon briefing.

The patient had a fever, which later subsided, last Monday night and went to a hospital in Wuhan. He returned to Hong Kong on Thursday by high-speed rail via Shenzhen.