The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday (29) made an important announcement advising people to refrain from traveling to China as the country has currently been suffering a major outbreak of the deadly coronavirus, The Hindu reported.

In an earlier advisory, the Ministry had said, “All non-essential travel to China should be avoided,” which was later revised into a clear advisory requesting people to not travel to the neighbouring country amid the outbreak.

The death toll from the novel coronavirus on Wednesday rose to 132, with over 1,500 new cases reported.

Indian authorities earlier told that they had started the process of safely evacuating Indian citizens that have been stuck in Hubei province due to emergency-like situations after the of nCorona-2019 virus. Wuhan city of the province has been reported to be the epicentre of the virus.

Japan, earlier, said it had evacuated all its people from Wuhan.

However, the Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Weidong tweeted after the announcement of India preparing to evacuate its nationals and said, “The World Health Organisation (WHO) does not recommend the evacuation of nationals, and called on the international community to remain calm and not overreact. The WHO is confident in China’s epidemic prevention and control ability.”

While, India has not yet reported any positive case of the virus, it has continued the screen tests of passengers arriving at all major airports.