South Korea reported 20 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday, increasing its total by nearly two-thirds — including a cluster of at least 16 centred on the southern city of Daegu.

The trade-dependent nation has been hit by the economic fallout from the virus outbreak in neighbouring China, but until Wednesday’s jump, its own case numbers had hardly changed for several days.

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The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said in a statement that 20 new coronavirus cases had been confirmed, raising its total from 31 to 51.

Seoul has blocked entry to foreigners coming from Hubei, the Chinese province that is the epicentre of the outbreak, and suspended visa-free entry to the island of Jeju, popular with Chinese tourists, but has not imposed a general ban on arrivals from China.

In mainland China, where the virus first emerged, more than 2,000 people have been killed and 74,000 infected.

Hong Kong has confirmed the virus in 62 patients, two of whom have died. The first infections were largely found within people who had travelled to the epicentre in China’s central Hubei province.

In 2003, 299 Hong Kongers were killed by an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) — 40 per cent of the global total fatalities.

Meanwhile, the director of a hospital in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, is among those who died on Tuesday. Zhiming, a neurosurgeon, is the first hospital head to die of the Coronavirus infection.

Authorities have placed about 56 million people in hard-hit central Hubei under an unprecedented lockdown. Other cities far from the epicentre have restricted the movements of residents, while Beijing ordered people arriving in the capital to undergo a 14-day self-quarantine.

However, the epidemic has continued to spread across China. There have been some 900 cases around the world, with only five deaths outside the mainland — in France, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Since the US repatriated more than 300 American passengers on Monday, Britain became the latest country to offer its citizens a way off the boat, after similar plans by Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and South Korea.

(With agency inputs)