The death toll due to novel Coronavirus outbreak in China has surged past 811 on Sunday, while the number of confirmed cases jumped to over 37,000, according to authorities. It has surpassed the global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, even as the World Health Organization said the outbreak appeared to be “stabilising”.
The latest data came after the WHO said the last four days had seen “some stabilising” in Hubei but warned it was “very early to make any predictions” and the figures can still “shoot up”.
Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said the “stable period” of the outbreak “may reflect the impact of the control measures that have been put in place”.
Meanwhile, the Chinese health authorities have said that they received reports of 89 deaths on Saturday and there were 37,198 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
In its daily update, the commission also confirmed another 2,656 new cases. There are now more than 37,198 confirmed infections across the country.
Among the 89 deaths, 81 were from Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, two in Henan, and one each in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
On Saturday, 600 people recovered and walked out of the hospitals. This included 324 in Hubei province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The first foreign victim in China was confirmed this week when a 60-year-old American diagnosed with the virus died on Thursday in Wuhan, according to the US embassy.
A Japanese man in his 60s with a suspected coronavirus infection also died in a hospital in the city.
The two fatalities outside the mainland have been a Chinese man in the Philippines and a 39-year-old man in Hong Kong
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a disease in the same family as the new coronavirus, left nearly 650 people dead in mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
More than 120 others died around the world.
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.