Beijing: The death toll in China’s novel coronavirus has gone up to 2,236 with 118 more deaths reported, mostly from the hard-hit Hubei province, while the overall confirmed infection cases have climbed to 75,465, Chinese health officials said Friday.
The number of deaths is higher than the previous day when 114 people died due to the disease, but the country reported the lowest number of new infection cases in nearly a month, fuelling hopes that Beijing’s epidemic control efforts were working.
By the end of Thursday, 2,236 people had died of the disease and 75,465 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection had been reported from 31 provincial-level regions and in China, the National Health Commission (NHC) of the country said in its daily report. The number of new infections stood at 889.
Among the deaths, 115 were from the epicentre of the virus Hubei province and one each in Zhejiang, Chongqing and Yunnan, respectively.
The report also said that 18,264 patients infected with Coronavirus have been discharged from hospitals after recovery by the end of Thursday.
Hubei Province, centre of the novel coronavirus outbreak, reported 411 new confirmed cases, according to the provincial health commission Friday.
The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province to 62,442. Wuhan, the provincial capital, recorded a total of 45,346 confirmed cases.
Among the 42,056 hospitalised patients, 8,979 were still in severe condition and another 2,018 in critical condition, the local health commission said.
By the end of Thursday, 68 confirmed cases including two deaths had been reported in Hong Kong, 10 confirmed cases in Macao, and 24 in Taiwan including one death.
Meanwhile, Beijing saw a sudden spike in the cases after the central city hospital reported 36 novel coronavirus infections Thursday, a sharp increase from nine cases from two weeks earlier, leading many to fear a potential explosion of infection numbers in the capital, the state-run ‘Global Times’ daily reported.
Among the infected at Fuxing Hospital in Xicheng district were eight medical workers, nine cleaning staff and 19 patients along with their families, the report said.
“Considering 36 confirmed cases were found in Fuxing Hospital, it is more about one case of multiple infections rather than an epidemic of the whole area,” Wang Guangfa, director of the department of respiratory and critical care medicine at ‘Peking University First Hospital’ said.
Another major hospital, ‘Peking University People’s Hospital’, on Thursday, for the first time, reported confirmed cases of infection. Three patients at the hospital were confirmed to have coronavirus February 17.
Agencies
