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Sri Lanka closes all schools after first local transmission of coronavirus

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The Sri Lankan government on Thursday announced the closure of schools nationwide to “stop children and parents from panicking,” just after the country reported its first confirmed coronavirus case.

The closures will take effect from Friday until the Sinhala and Tamil new year holidays end on April 20, Dallas Alahapperuma, minister of education and sports, told media during a news conference.

Parents outside a school in the capital of Colombo said they supported the government’s decision.

Government officials said on Wednesday that the country’s first confirmed case was a tour guide who had recently come into contact with a group of Italian tourists.

As of Thursday, Italy has reported more than 12 000 infections and 827 deaths, the second-largest cluster outside of China.

‘Please keep one metre away from each other while queuing’

Meanwhile from Beijing to Jakarta, many usually bustling Asian airports have become eerily empty and quiet as coronavirus tightens its grip over the region where the outbreak first began late last year.

Airline staff looking more like surgeons in their face masks and other protective gear shepherd trickles of passengers towards sparsely populated, and well-disinfected, departure lounges. Many flights have been cancelled.

At Beijing International Airport, passengers arriving to check in for flights are greeted with the message: “Please keep one metre away from each other while queuing.”

In January, passenger numbers through this airport fell more than 15% from the previous year to 7.295 million. February’s figures are expected to be worse.

Tokyo’s huge Haneda airport has a similar deserted feel.

In March last year, over 1.6 million people passed through this airport, but this month relatively few passengers cross its gleaming floors or visit its bars and restaurants.

Passengers using Seoul’s Incheon Airport also faced no tiresome wait to check in for their flights.

Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport, which mainly serves overseas routes to Japan and China, had no international flights on Thursday for the first time in 40 years, local media said. Nobody at the airport was immediately available to confirm the reports.

More normal scenes prevailed at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, Singapore’s Changi Airport and Sydney Airport on Thursday, though many passengers queuing to board their flights wore face masks.

Airports in Europe and beyond are likely to increasingly resemble those in South Korea and Japan in coming weeks.

US President Donald Trump ordered travel from Europe to the United States restricted for 30 days to contain the spread of coronavirus, a move that has battered global airline stocks and thrown the travel plans of thousands of people into confusion.

The map below tracks coronavirus cases across the world

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