China has announced the indefinite postponement of the top-flight Chinese Super League (CSL) in response to the malignant viral outbreak sweeping the country.

According to a statement from Chinese Football Association on Thursday, all domestic football has also been suspended.

The CSL 2020 campaign had been scheduled to kick off on February 22, but was shelved along with “all types of football matches” in order to “carry out prevention and control of the pneumonia epidemic,” said a

The announcement comes just a few hours after the World Indoor Athletics Championships, scheduled to take place in the Chinese city of Nanjing in March, were postponed until 2021 after advice from the World Health Organisation.

Football is fanatically followed in the world’s most populous nation with cash-rich clubs importing expensive foreign signings such as Brazilians Hulk and Oscar, and Argentina’s Carlos Tevez in recent years.

It becomes the latest sport to be hit by the virus which by Thursday had seen more than 7,700 cases confirmed in China with at least 170 fatalities.

The virus has spread from the epicentre of Wuhan to more that 15 countries, with about 60 cases in Asia, Europe, North America and, most recently, the Middle East.

On Wednesday, World Cup skiing races, the first test events for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, were cancelled because of the outbreak.

The men’s downhill and super-G races were scheduled for February 15 and February 16 in Yanqing, 70 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Beijing.