More than 200,000 members of a religious sect were being checked for coronavirus symptoms by South Korean authorities Wednesday, as US commanders reported the first case among American forces in the country.

Dozens of guests at an Austrian hotel hit by the new coronavirus have been allowed to leave after a lockdown was lifted, officials said on Wednesday.

Nine people were quarantined following medical tests at the hotel in the Alpine city of Innsbruck, where an Italian receptionist tested positive for the virus, the Tyrol state government said.

Russia on Wednesday warned against travel to Italy, South Korea and Iran so as to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The new coronavirus epidemic swelled on Wednesday with cases in South Korea surging past 1,000 after deaths soared in Iran and infections appeared in previously untouched countries, prompting dire warnings that the world was not ready to contain it.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday demanded that Iran "tell the truth" about a coronavirus outbreak, voicing alarm at allegations of a cover-up.

More than 100 Turks are being quarantined after returning from coronavirus-hit Iran, Turkey's health minister said on Tuesday.

Iran's deputy health minister confirmed on Tuesday that he has tested positive for the new coronavirus, amid a major outbreak in the Islamic republic.

The novel coronavirus has claimed three more lives in Iran, state media reported, taking the country's overall death toll from the outbreak to 15 -- the highest outside China.

Gulf countries announced new measures Tuesday to cut links with Iran to prevent coronavirus spreading after the confirmation of 20 new cases, all of them people returning from the Islamic republic.

A viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 80,000 people globally. The World Health Organization has named the illness COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it.