Amid deadly novel Coronavirus (2019-nCOV) outbreak across the world, the death toll has jumped to 304 with the number of cases climbing to 14,380 in China, according to Chinese health officials on Sunday.
On Saturday, a total of 304 people had died of the disease and 14,380 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions in China, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in its daily report.
All the deaths are in Hubei Province, China’s National Health Commission said.
Another 4,562 new suspected cases were reported.
Earlier on Saturday, 315 patients became seriously ill and 85 people were discharged from hospital after recovery, the Commission said.
The commission further added that 2,110 patients remained in severe condition, and 19,544 people were suspected of being infected with the virus.
On Friday, the US declared a public health emergency and temporarily banning the entry of foreign nationals who had travelled to China over the past two weeks to contain the spread of a deadly new virus.
International alarm over the new coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, in December, is driven by its rapid spread and the fact that infectious disease experts cannot yet know how deadly or contagious it is.
Earlier on Thursday, President Donald Trump created a coronavirus task force to lead his administration’s response to the deadly virus which has killed 170 people and infected 7,736 others in China, and spread to 20 countries, including India.
The task force is led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and is coordinated through the National Security Council, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
In China, thousands of factory workers on Lunar New Year holidays may struggle to get back to work next week due to travel restrictions. Major firms such as Alphabet Inc’s Google and Sweden’s IKEA have closed China operations.
Four Chinese provinces, including Shandong and Heilongjiang in the industrial rust-belt region, have asked companies not to start work before February 10.
Early today, the Philippines has reported the first death from the deadly coronavirus.
According to reports, it was a 44-year-old Chinese man from the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected. He appears to have been infected before arriving in the Philippines. “This is the first reported death outside China,” Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the WHO representative to the Philippines, said. “However, we need to take into mind that this is not a locally acquired case. This patient came from the epicentre of this outbreak.”
Meanwhile, India’s second case of coronavirus has been reported in Kerala, three days after the southern state-reported country’s first case of the viral infection that originated in China.
On Thursday, Kerala reported India’s first case of coronavirus – a medical student studying in China’s Wuhan city, the epicentre of the outbreak. She was quarantined at a hospital in Thrissur after she “self-reported” throat infection, the government said.
The Coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
The Coronavirus is a large family of viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndromes, but the virus in China is a novel strain and not seen before.
(With inputs from PTI)