Russia ups monitoring at Chinese border following coronavirus outbreak

Amid the spread of a new coronavirus that has infected more than 600 people in China, Russian officials have taken measures to prevent the disease from gaining a foothold in their own country. In the Amur region, which borders China, a region-wide alert has been issued, said local welfare monitoring chief Olga Kruganova. On the federal level, Kruganova’s agency, Rospotrebnadzor, has instituted heightened sanitary and quarantining measures at all transfer points between China and Russia.

According to Interfax, those measures include mandatory remote temperature measurements for all travelers arriving from China. However, one Rospotrebnadzor official said Russia has not cut off air travel to or from the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged: “There have been no obstacles from the Russian side to the on-time completion of flights,” the source said.

For several days, Russian media outlets have reported on Russian patients who began feeling poorly after returning from trips to China. However, none of those suspected pneumonia cases has yet to be confirmed as an infection of the new virus.