Death toll in COVID-19 outbreak hits 2118

Chinese health authority on Thursday said it received reports of 394 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 novel coronavirus infection and 114 deaths on Wednesday from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 74,576 by the end of Wednesday, and 2,118 people died of the disease.

 

Among the deaths, 108 were in Hubei Province and one in Hebei, Shanghai, Fujian, Shandong, Yunnan and Shaanxi, respectively, according to the National Health Commission.

Another 1,277 new suspected cases were reported Wednesday, said the commission.

Also on Wednesday, 1,779 people were discharged from hospital after recovery, while the number of severe cases decreased by 113 to 11,864.

The commission added that 4,922 people were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

A total of 16,155 people had been discharged from hospital after recovery.

The commission said 589,163 close contacts had been traced, adding that among them, 25,318 were discharged from medical observation Wednesday, with 126,363 others still under medical observation.

By the end of Wednesday, 65 confirmed cases including two deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 10 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 24 in Taiwan including one death.

Five patients in Hong Kong, six in Macao and two in Taiwan have been discharged from hospital after recovery.

Agence France-Presse reports that China reported a big drop in new coronavirus cases on Thursday, fuelling hopes the epidemic was nearing its peak, but Japan faced a growing crisis as two passengers from a quarantined cruise ship died.

 

The death toll rose in China hit 2,118 as 114 more people died, but health officials reported the lowest number of new cases there in nearly a month, including in the hardest-hit province, Hubei.

More than 74,000 people have been infected in China and hundreds more in some 25 countries, with Iran reporting two deaths, the first fatalities in the Middle East.

In Japan, a man and a woman in their 80s who had been aboard the Diamond Princess have died, local media reported, citing a government source.

A World Health Organization official noted the progress in China but warned it had not reached a turning point just yet.

Chinese officials said this week that their drastic containment efforts, including quarantining tens of millions of people in Hubei and restricting movements in other cities nationwide, have started to pay off.

‘After arduous efforts, the situation is changing for the better,’ foreign minister Wang Yi said at a meeting with Southeast Asian counterparts in Laos late Wednesday, according to the officials of Xinhua news agency.

Hubei and its capital Wuhan — where the virus is believed to have emerged in December — are still ‘severely affected’ by the epidemic, Wang said.

‘But the situation is under effective control, while other regions are embracing comforting news,’ he said.

 

Two people died in Iran after testing positive on Wednesday for the new coronavirus, the health ministry said, in the Islamic republic’s first cases of the disease.

They are also the first deaths from the COVID-19 virus in the Middle East and only the seventh and eighth outside China.

State news agency IRNA quoted Kianoush Jahanpour, a ministry spokesman, as saying that the virus was detected in two elderly people with immunity problems in the holy city of Qom, south of the Iranian capital.

‘Following the recent cases of chronic respiratory diseases in Qom, two of the patients tested positive in preliminary tests,’ it quoted him as saying.

‘Unfortunately both passed away in the intensive care unit due to old age and issues with their immune system.’

The state news agency had earlier quoted Jahanpour as saying that the ‘new coronavirus’ had been confirmed in two people and that other suspected cases were isolated.

IRNA also quoted a media adviser to Iran’s health minister as saying two people had died after testing positive for the coronavirus.

‘Both of the people who had tested positive for coronavirus were in Qom and were old. Both have passed away,’ said Alireza Vahabzadeh.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net