US experts on infectious diseases, including government officials, are awaiting approval to enter China to help fight the coronavirus epidemic, having been included on a list proposed by the World Health Organisation, a US embassy spokesman told Reuters on Saturday.

China agreed to allow WHO to form a team of experts to travel to China to learn about the virus and find solutions to the outbreak, the spokesman said.

“The United States appreciates China’s efforts and continued coordination with public health officials across the globe,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “These US experts have extensive experience working with the World Health Organisation on a range of infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics including Ebola, avian influenza and SARS,” he added.

A WHO source in Geneva said that the agency was waiting to hear back from China on the proposed team.

China’s foreign ministry said it understood that the National Health Commission was in close communication with WHO on the specific arrangements for the team’s visit.

France ski resort

Two schools near a French ski resort where five Britons have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus will be shut next week as authorities try to determine with whom those infected had been in contact, a regional health official said.

Eleven Britons, including the five who tested positive for the virus, are being examined in local hospitals.

The group of 11 includes a nine-year-old child who recently spent time in a school in Contamines — a mountain village of which he was also a resident — as well as in another establishment where he attended French lessons.

The five British nationals had stayed in the same chalet at a ski resort in Haute-Savoie in the Alps, health officials said, raising fears of further infections at a busy period in the ski season. The five had stayed in the same ski chalet with a person who had been in Singapore.