China is decisively working to control the deadly outbreak of the novel coronavirus, its ambassador to the U.N. said Friday, insisting there was no need for countries impose "excessive measures" like border closures.

Singapore on Friday announced a sweeping ban on arrivals from mainland China as authorities toughened measures to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.

Carrying permits demanding "fast passage," truck drivers rushed a 560-ton shipment of disinfectant from eastern China to Wuhan, the locked-down city of 11 million people at the center of a vast effort to contain a new viral disease.

Outside the metropolis in central China, the cargo was shifted to local trucks with drivers in masks and protective suits, part of a tightly controlled flow of food and other supplies through checkpoints that have blocked most access to Wuhan since Jan. 23.

The World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the new coronavirus, as China reported Friday the death toll had climbed to 213 with nearly 10,000 infections.

The United States told its citizens to avoid China after the World Health Organization declared a global coronavirus emergency, as the Chinese death toll rose Friday to 213 and total infections surpassed the SARS epidemic of two decades ago.

China counted 170 deaths from a new virus Thursday and more countries reported infections, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical observation and even isolation.

India and the Philippines reported their first cases, in a traveler and a student who had both been in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the new type of coronavirus first surfaced in December. South Korea confirmed a case that was locally spread, in a man who had contact with a patient diagnosed earlier.

Russia said Thursday it was closing its border with China to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting that the order had been signed "to take measures to close the border (with China) in the Far East," Russian news agencies reported.

Thousands of foreigners are among millions of people stuck in the central Chinese city of Wuhan as the country struggles to get to grips with the spread of a SARS-like virus which has claimed 170 lives nationwide.

The period between exposure to the new coronavirus that originated in China and symptoms is 5.2 days on average, but varies greatly among patients, according to one of the largest studies yet published on the deadly epidemic.

Long queues form at pharmacies and crowds of panic-buyers strip supermarket shelves in Hong Kong as fears spread through the crowded metropolis over China's new coronavirus epidemic.