Shenzhen traces a case of coronavirus infection

In the late hours of Sunday, the first imported case of novel coronavirus infection was confirmed in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, the municipal health commission reported.

On Sunday, the provincial health commission informed Hong Kong, and cross-border ferries and road travel from the Hong Kong International Airport to the Chinese mainland were suspended.

The patient is a 35-year-old man who works in Bristol, the United Kingdom. On Thursday, he had taken a flight from London to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

After reaching Hong Kong International Airport at around 1:30 pm, he got on a cross-border ferry at SkyPier, which is integrated with Hong Kong International Airport to carry passengers to and from ports in the Pearl River Delta and the Macao Special Administrative Region.

When the man entered Shenzhen from the city's Shekou port at 4:30 pm, his body temperature was normal. Minutes later, he took a taxi to his home in Futian district. During the trip, he wore a mask.

On Saturday morning, he had symptoms of coronavirus infection and was sent by his family to a hospital for treatment. Because he was tested positive at 9 pm, the man was immediately transferred to the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen, the only hospital designated to treat infected people. Now he is in stable condition, the municipal health commission said.

Shenzhen promptly began an investigation to trace the source. The patient had not been in Wuhan, Hubei province recently. Wuhan is the epicenter of the outbreak. Two of the man's colleagues in the UK have also developed coughs and fevers.

There were 93 close contacts with the patient, according to the investigation. Of those, 46 have been quarantined and put under medical observation. The rest are passengers on the ferry, whom the commission is contacting to urge them to take all necessary measures to guard against of the possibility of infection.