Canadian health authorities on Monday confirmed the country's first case of a deadly coronavirus that originated in China, and said the patient's wife had also tested positive.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said the United States was offering to help China in combating the spread of a virus that has sparked fears of global contagion.

A virus similar to the SARS pathogen has claimed 81 lives since emerging in a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread around the world.

Anxious foreigners in the locked-down city that spawned China's deadly viral epidemic say they are stranded at home, running out of food and desperate to leave, as governments scrambled to draw up evacuation plans.

A top Chinese health official said Sunday that a new deadly virus that has infected nearly 2,000 people and killed dozens in China is "not as powerful as SARS".

China on Sunday expanded drastic travel restrictions to contain a viral epidemic that has killed 56 people and infected nearly 2,000, as the United States and France prepared to evacuate their citizens from a quarantined city at the outbreak's epicenter.

China has ordered nationwide measures to identify suspected cases of a deadly virus on trains, aeroplanes and buses, as the death toll and number of patients has skyrocketed.

Two cases of the coronavirus have been "confirmed" in France, the first in Europe, French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said on Friday.

Chinese authorities expanded a massive quarantine effort covering 13 cities on Friday to contain a deadly virus as nervous residents were checked for fevers and the death toll climbed to 26.

Lebanon's new health minister Hamad Hasan on Friday made a surprise inspection visit to the state-run hospital in Hermel.

“We have made this visit to honor our promise that we would stand by our people and they will find us with them whenever they make any appeal,” Hasan said.