China reported a sharp fall in new deaths and cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, but world health officials warned it was too early to make predictions about the outbreak as new infections continued to rise in other countries.
China’s Hubei province – the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak – reported 630 new cases of infection and 96 new deaths as of Saturday, local health authorities said as the provincial capital marked a month under lockdown. SCMP reports.
The figures announced on Sunday amounted to an increase of 264 new cases and a drop of 10 new deaths recorded a day earlier. The province has 64,084 infections and 2,346 deaths since the outbreak started in December.
Thirty-two new infections were reported in the province’s prisons. There were 1,742 patients discharged from hospital on Saturday.
The new figures came as Wuhan marked a month since emergency travel restrictions were imposed to contain the crisis.
Between January 22 – the day before the lockdown – and Friday, the province recorded 64,209 new infections. On the lockdown’s eve, the city reported just 69 new cases, but by February 12 the daily total reached 14,840 as authorities started regarding clinically diagnosed patients as confirmed cases.
Across mainland China, 76,585 new infections were recorded during the period.
The coronavirus outbreak first emerged in Wuhan in late December, and has spread to 28 other countries, infecting more than 77,000 people worldwide and killing more than 2,300.
In addition to Wuhan, other cities in the province also imposed lockdowns, leaving their residents struggling to cope with shortages of daily essentials and medical supplies.
Chinese officials and health experts said conditions had improved, but the challenges were still serious and containment work should not be relaxed.
Alarm in other counties
Even though the number of new cases in China has fallen, public health experts are worried that the outbreak could turn into a pandemic because of a surge cases in other countries, including South Korea, Japan and Iran.
World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was concerned about the number of coronavirus cases with no clear epidemiological link to China.
World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on African Union members to be more aggressive in attacking the Covid-19 virus. Photo: Reuters
He called on African Union member states “to come together to be more aggressive in attacking” the virus, which causes a disease known as Coronavirus.
“Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for Coronavirus to spread in countries with weaker health systems,” Tedros, speaking by video link from Geneva, said during a meeting of African health ministers at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
There had been more than 200 suspected cases in the WHO’s African region, which includes most African countries, though nearly all had been confirmed negative, regional director Matshidiso Rebecca Moeti said on Saturday.
Reporting by Teddy Ng @ SCMP
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