Coronavirus case near Tokyo spurs alert for US military personnel in Japan

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The U.S. military has warned its personnel in Japan to watch out for symptoms of a deadly pneumonia-like virus after a man from Kanagawa prefecture, home to thousands of sailors and soldiers, contracted the disease in China this month.

Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million people in east-central China, planned to shutdown outbound flights and trains Thursday to contain the disease that has sickened hundreds and killed 17 in the country, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The Air Force’s 374th Medical Group at Yokota posted an alert to social media the same day, stating that the World Health Organization had been informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan.

“A novel (new) coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was identified as the causative virus by Chinese authorities on 7 January 2020,” the alert states.

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