The Ghana Health Service has allayed fears the coronavirus in China may find its way into the country.

Director-General, Dr. Patrick Aboagye said stringent measures have been put in place especially at the country's entry points to screen passengers.

He also added a clinical health plan has been developed to manage the virus should it enter Ghana with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research on standby to test and diagnose.

“We’ve put in place systems to sort of prevent entry and surveillance to identify any threats from anybody coming from an affected country so that we are able to prevent the disease from entering the country. The Public Health emergency Management Committee which currently exists at the national, regional and district level have been alerted. Yesterday the national technical coordinating committee also met to discuss the situation and confer measures put in place the public health division and the Ghana Health Service in general,” Dr. Aboagye said.

So far, in China, the lock-down measures are increasing across the Hubei province to try to control the spread.

Travel restrictions have been expanded to 13 cities, with a total of 36 million people affected.

Wuhan, where the outbreak began, is rapidly building a new hospital.

The city - home to around 11 million people - is struggling to cope with the increasing number of patients and the city is on lockdown.

There are several Ghanaian students who live in Wuhan. Meanwhile, the National Union of Ghana Students says their colleagues in various institutions in China are safe.

“Most cities where you have Ghanaians are safe. In Wuhan, which is the epicenter of the virus, I interacted with them since this epidemic started and everyone is safe because we have the local executives interacting with all the students in the various universities. The Ghanaian Embassy over there has also issued some guidelines for students,” the NUGS president explained.