China is not prepared for the scale of the Coronavirus Outbreak it is facing, but has mobilised the entire country to tackle the epidemic, Beijing’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, has said.

Answering questions from the media this morning, Liu said:

I can’t say China is prepared for this outbreak, we don’t have enough beds or hospitals. That’s why we have built two emergency hospitals in just ten days.

He added that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had held a meeting yesterday in which he had instructed medical personnel to work “around the clock” to treat patients.

Liu said he could understand the complaints of some residents in locked-down Wuhan, but said it would take some time for them to understand the urgency of the situation. He offered reassurances that all residents’ basic necessities were being provided for.

He stressed the rest of China was not in the same locked-down state as the Hubei province, but said some local authorities might have overreacted in their responses to the outbreak.

Finally, he said that communication between Xi and Boris Johnson was good, contrary to reports this morning which suggested there were concerns the prime minister had not sent a personal message of support over the coronavirus outbreak.

More than 140 Russians have been evacuated from Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, to a medical facility in Siberia guarded by members of Russia’s National Guard.

Inside, many have taken to Instagram to blog their time in quarantine, snapping photos of their dinner and exercise routines.

Pavel Lichman, a model who was evacuated from Wuhan, told the Guardian:

The quarantine is pretty hands-off and easy. The only thing is that we’re not allowed to come into contact with the people who are in the neighbouring rooms. We don’t leave our rooms. They bring us food. Doctors come in to test us: check our temperatures, inspect our throats, and measure the amount of oxygen in our blood.

If the evacuees leave their rooms, doctors warned, the two-week countdown starts again.

In the other rooms, Russians took stock of the bizarre turn of events and planned out their time in lockdown. “Plans for the next two weeks,” one young woman wrote, while firing up a Netflix documentary about the rapper Travis Scott.

Another modelled her striped pyjamas on a balcony overlooking a snowy forest of birch.

Student Marina Zaitseva was visiting Wuhan when the outbreak occurred. In an interview with the Fontanka.ru website, she described a difficult evacuation from China aboard a military plane with little idea of where they were headed.

When they arrived at the medical facility, they were told to give up their clothing for disinfecting. She said:

In the hall we were met by people not just in masks, but in full bodysuits. They met us as though we were radiating this virus.

The US is continuing to fly hundreds of its citizens out of Wuhan, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, in what it anticipates to be the last of its chartered flights.

On Wednesday, two planes flew 350 citizens back to an air force base in California, and two more flights will arrive from Wuhan this week. The US does not anticipate any further chartered flights after this.

Other countries are also airlifting their nationals from the area, including Singapore, which is arranging a second evacuation flight for later this week.

The Britons who were evacuated from Wuhan last week have been told they can leave the quarantine facility in the Wirral next Thursday.

Matt Raw, who was one of 83 British nationals airlifted out of Wuhan on the first evacuation flight, received the news last night:

We have just been advised that we are permitted to leave here on Thursday 13 February. We’ve basically done half our time and as long as the status quo remains and nobody gets sick, then we should be able to leave in a week’s time from now.

It’s excellent news to have an end date in sight.

Another 11 Britons were evacuated on a French-chartered flight on Sunday, after many failed to make it to the airport in time for the first flight.

They are being kept in quarantine separately from those on the first.

Chinese officials are reportedly “concerned” that Boris Johnson has not yet sent a personal message of support to the country over the coronavirus outbreak.

Stanley Johnson, the prime minister’s father, met the Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming on Tuesday, and reported back to UK officials – and accidentally copied in the BBC.

The email, to the environment minister Zac Goldsmith and other UK officials, said:

Re the outbreak of coronavirus, Mr Liu obviously was concerned that there had not yet – so he asserted – been direct contact between the PM and Chinese head of state or government in terms of a personal message or telephone call.

A government spokesman said the UK had been in close contact with the Chinese authorities since the outbreak.

A former special adviser to the World Health Organization has said he thinks researchers are “weeks away” from testing a coronavirus vaccine on animals, but it could be months before human trials.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, David Harper said: “The researchers around the world are working very hard.

“We feel that we’re within a matter of weeks of the animal tests that are necessary before we go into the trials of the vaccine in humans, which could take some months of course, but still very much shorter than we would normally expect for a vaccine of this type.”

A former World Health Organization official who helped lead the response to SARS has said “the full potential” of the coronavirus is not yet known.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, David Heyman, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene, said:

The full potential of this virus is not yet known. Will this virus become a virus which is endemic in humans and continue to transmit in the coming years?

We don’t understand the spectrum of the disease. We don’t know how many infections are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms like cold, so it is impossible to identify all cases.

He said the disease is spread via droplets, when people are in a close enough area that they can cough on each other, and there is no evidence to suggest it is transmissible over longer distances.

A British man who is among 3,700 people under a coronavirus quarantine on a cruise ship in Japan has voiced concerns over ongoing monitoring for the disease on board.

David Abel, from Northamptonshire, has praised Princess Cruises for its handling of the situation so far, but said fears remain about efforts to fight the disease on the ship.

“What health checks have we had in the last three or four days, or since the health check when the quarantine officers came on board? None whatsoever,” Abel said in a Facebook video post.

There has been no health check, so we do not know whether there are people on board still who have got symptoms that may have the virus. We do not know.

So I am now getting a fraction concerned about the health checks that I believe should be taking place, because if there are more infected people on board they should be taken off. We want a virus-free ship.

Health workers in the port city of Yokohama said on Thursday that 10 more people on the Diamond Princess had tested positive to the disease, in addition to 10 others on Wednesday when the ship was first isolated.

Those 20 people are receiving treatment at nearby hospitals while the remaining passengers are confined to their cabins.

Abel, who along with his wife are believed to be the only two Britons on board, added: “And what happens when we finally get back to the UK? Are we going to be put in quarantine yet again for another 14 days?”

It is thought the Foreign Office has offered support, but is letting cruise ship staff manage the situation.

China has announced it will halve tariffs on $75bn worth of US goods, as the country’s economy comes under additional pressure amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Tariffs on some goods will be cut from to from 10% to 5%, and from 5% to 2.5% on others.

The announcement is part of a partial resolution of the long-running trade war between the US and China agreed last month, and the US will also roll back some tariffs as part of the agreement.

The cuts will take effect on 14 February, but tariffs will remain on $35bn worth of US goods.

China’s economy has suffered as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, with factories across the country closed and its manufacturing sector seeing a drop in production.

This is Jessica Murray taking over from Alison to track the latest developments with the coronavirus outbreak throughout the day.

Global health experts have warned that “hidden” coronavirus cases mean that we could just be seeing the “tip of the iceberg”.

Tom Frieden, a former director at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there could be “vastly more cases” than previously thought.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that containment is very unlikely,” Frieden said. “It probably isn’t worth giving up, but trying to contain Wuhan coronavirus like Sars and Mers is very unlikely, just because of the number of cases and the number of [Chinese] provinces and the ease with which it is ease spreading in families.”

He added:

It’s a fog of war reality, which is what makes me suspect that what are seeing is the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s the latest tracker image from Johns Hopkins University on the spread of the coronavirus. If you want to check in on the tracker, you can find it here.

A 28-year-old doctor in Hunan province has died after working for 10 days on the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese state media is reporting.

As we have reported today, the death doll in China for the coronavirus has passed 560. You can find our latest full report on the story here.

For a further exploration of why stock markets are surging ahead despite the prospect of a marked slowdown in China (see this blog post), look no further than this piece by our economics editor Larry Elliott.

But he asks whether the outbreak is the kind of freakish, unforeseen event that could yet spark a global economic crisis – a “black swan” event in the market parlance.

Stock markets continue to shrug off the deepening crisis with the Nikkei up a whopping 2.6% with less than an hour of trading to go while Seoul had also gained a healthy 2.55%. Hong Kong was even better, up 2.71%, and Shanghai was up 1.3%.

In Sydney, the Australian bourse rallying to its second highest close of all time. The ASX200 was paused at 7,047 points, a rise of 1% on the day and only 43 points off the record high set back in January.

Nguyen Trinh, senior economist for emerging Asia at the investment bank Natixis in Hong Kong, said investors were obviously expecting that the disruption seen across China would be temporary and that the policy response by China and Asian central banks would be enough to inject into markets much-needed liquidity.

However, she noted that commodities had seen a more turbulent few weeks with oil, for example, down more than 10% for the year.

She said:

The commodity market is much more aggressive in pricing in a reduction of activity with iron ore, copper, oil, soy beans all dropping more than double digits.

The Chinese CGTN network has reported the criteria for patients being admitted to Wuhan’s three new temporary hospitals, including at the city’s international convention centre.

They include:

• People infected with #coronavirus
• Clinical manifestation that is mild
• Patients aged 18-65 who are able to take care of themselves
• Patients with no respiratory diseases, no cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and no psychosis
• Influenza-virus tested negative

The Chinese state tabloid Global Times has published a video showing police monitoring people who are not wearing face masks and telling them to go home and get their masks.

The outlet is also reporting that a new laboratory has been built in five days that will have the capacity to carry out 10,000 coronavirus tests per day.

In case you missed it yesterday, schools in China’s financial hub of Shanghai have been ordered to stay shut until at least the end of February.

I’ve done a number of posts about the cruise ship in Japan, but passengers on the World Dream, quarantined in Hong Kong’s Kai Tak terminal, with 3,600 people aboard, are also being screened for the virus after three passengers on a previous voyage were diagnosed with the virus.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, has announced that the Ocean and Kai Tak cruise liner terminals, will be closed.

Lam has also ordered that anyone arriving from mainland China from Saturday, will be forced to face “compulsory quarantine” for 14 days in Hong Kong.

There were long queues in supermarket across Hong Kong last night, with people panic buying toilet rolls and tissues, largely due to a rumour spreading online saying China will stop manufacturing toilet paper for the next two weeks. There was also a run on vitamins, rice and packet noodles, leaving supermarket shelves empty.

Here are some of the pictures emerging from the operation to hospitalise infected passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.