Pakistan suspends flight operations to China amid coronavirus outbreak.

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan on Friday halted flights to and from China with immediate effect, a civil aviation official said, as the death toll from a virus outbreak spreading in China mounted and the World Health Organisation called it a global health emergency.

'We are suspending flights to China until Feb 2,' additional secretary of aviation Abdul Sattar Khokhar told by phone, adding the situation would be reviewed after that date. He declined to comment on the reason for the closure.

Some airlines, including British Airways, have suspended flights to China due to warnings of the coronavirus outbreak. Germany, Britain and other countries have issued warnings about travel to China.

Russia also sealed its remote far-eastern border with China as a precaution on Thursday. Some countries have banned entry for travellers from Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first surfaced.

The Karachi Port Trust (KPT) will quarantine the Chinese and Southeast Asian ship personnel, its chairperson, Rear Admiral Jamil Akhtar, told media on Thursday, as preventive measures are ramped up to tackle coronavirus from spreading into the metropolis.

Akhtar said the containers, especially those arriving from China and southeast Asia, would be thoroughly checked, and that special care would be taken to ensure that the staff on these ships remained limited to the port only.

The crew aboard these ships were previously allowed to...

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