Hong Kong’s leader has announced that all rail links to mainland China will be cut starting Friday as fears grow about the spread of a new virus.

Chief executive Carrie Lam, wearing a green surgical mask, said both the high-speed rail station and the regular train station would be closed.

She stopped short of a total closing of the border but said that flights from the mainland would also be reduced.

China’s death toll from a new viral disease that is causing mounting global concern rose by 25 to at least 106 on Tuesday as the United States and other governments prepared to fly their citizens out of the locked-down city at the centre of the outbreak.

Hong Kong China Outbreak
Passengers wear protective face masks arrive at the high speed train station in Hong Kong (Vincent Yu/AP)

The total includes the first death in Beijing, the Chinese capital, and 24 more fatalities in Hubei province, where the first illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus occurred in December.

Asian stock markets tumbled for a second day, dragged down by worries about the virus’s global economic impact.

The US Consulate in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where authorities cut off most access January 22 in an effort to contain the disease, was preparing to fly its diplomats and some other Americans out of the city on Wednesday.

South Korea said it would send planes to Wuhan this week to evacuate citizens.

Japanese media said a Japanese plane has arrived in the Chinese city to bring back 200 citizens.

The Yomiuri newspaper said in an online article that the plane arrived late on Tuesday night in Wuhan and would return to Tokyo early on Wednesday morning.

Hong Kong China Outbreak
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam, centre, and other government officials wear protective face masks during a press conference (Vincent Yu/AP)

France, Mongolia and other governments also planned evacuations.

Meanwhile, Canada has confirmed a third case of the new virus and France has confirmed a fourth case.

China’s increasingly drastic containment efforts began with the suspension of plane, train and bus links to Wuhan, a city of 11 million people.

That lockdown has expanded to 17 cities with more than 50 million people in the most far-reaching disease-control measures ever imposed.

China extended the Lunar New Year holiday by three days to Sunday to reduce the risk of infection by keeping offices and factories nationwide closed and the public at home.

Authorities in Shanghai, a global business centre and home to 25 million people, extended the holiday in that city by an additional week to February 9.