Confirmed cases of infections from a new pneumonia-causing coronavirus raging in China have topped 10,000, the country's health authorities said Saturday, as foreign governments stepped up restrictions on those traveling from China to stop the virus' spread.

The number of infections rose 2,102 from the previous day to 11,791 in mainland China on Friday, with 259 deaths, up 46, the National Health Commission said. The virus has also been confirmed in more than 20 countries.

Following the World Health Organization declaration of the outbreak in China as a global public health emergency, the United States on Friday issued a ban on the entry of foreign travelers who have been in China in the last 14 days, effective Sunday.

Australia implemented a similar measure on Saturday.

Japan started refusing entry to foreign nationals who have been to Hubei Province, including the capital city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, in the two weeks prior to their arrival in Japan.

(Face masks are manufactured at a factory in Shanghai on Jan. 31, 2020, amid the spread of a deadly new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China.)

China, for its part, criticized Friday's U.S. travel advisory change for the country to the highest "do not travel" level, saying the WHO specifically advised against any travel restrictions.

The United States "has decided to act in the opposite way," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement. "This has set a bad example. It is certainly not a gesture of goodwill."

While other countries move to impose travel restrictions on China, the Chinese government, in a bid to stop the spread of the virus, said Saturday it is exempting anti-virus products from retaliatory tariffs that have been imposed on imports from the United States.

The U.S. goods subject to the exemption include disinfectants and protective gear as well as ambulances.

As the extended Lunar New Year holiday is set to end in China on Sunday, flights, trains and buses are expected to be packed with people trying to get home, prompting concerns that infections would spread further.

Beijing authorities have thus been asking companies to allow employees to work from home, according to Chinese media.

Apple Inc. said Saturday it will close all stores and offices in mainland China through Feb. 9, though its online store in China will stay open, U.S. media reported.

The Foreign Ministry said Saturday that China brought back a total of 310 residents of Hubei Province from Thailand, Malaysia and Japan on three chartered planes the previous day, according to Chinese media.

The flights from Bangkok, the Malaysian state of Sabah and Tokyo were organized as the outbreak had made it difficult for some Hubei residents, especially those from Wuhan, to return home from abroad, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

The virus has already infected more people than the SARS virus did during its 2002-2003 outbreak, in which 8,098 people were stricken and 774 killed worldwide.

But the fatality rate in the latest epidemic has been lower than the SARS pandemic, which had a fatality rate of around 10 percent. The outbreak of the new coronavirus has resulted in death for roughly 2 percent of infected patients so far.

Coronaviruses generally cause common cold-like symptoms affecting the nose, sinuses or upper throat and are spread through sneezing, coughing or direct contact.

But some types lead to more serious, sometimes deadly respiratory diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome or Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as SARS and MERS, respectively.

Zhong Nanshan, head of a high-level expert team in China's government-run National Health Commission, was quoted Wednesday by Xinhua as saying the new coronavirus originated in bats.

The Chinese pulmonologist, who combated the SARS epidemic, said the new coronavirus has the same origin as a virus found in a type of bat in 2017, the news agency reported.

The new coronavirus, known to be transmitted between humans, has already spread to other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, as well as North America, Europe, Australia and the Middle East.

Medical experts have called on people to avoid crowds, wash their hands, gargle and wear masks when outside, as influenza and colds are common in this period.

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