- South Korean authorities report 123 more infections including 75 linked to a church in Daegu, and two new deaths
- Hubei's latest daily figures show slight rise in cases and small drop in new deaths
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 Wuhan marked a month under a lockdown imposed to contain the crisis.
The figures announced on Sunday amounted to an increase of 264 new cases and a drop of 10 new deaths from the previous day's figures. 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.
Between January 22 " the day before the lockdown " and Friday, the province recorded 64,209 new infections. On the eve of the lockdown, Wuhan had 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.
Since emerging in Wuhan in late December, the outbreak has spread to at least 28 other countries and regions, infecting more than 77,000 people worldwide and killing more than 2,300.
Japanese woman tests positive for coronavirus after leaving Diamond Princess
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.
Jump in South Korea cases
South Korea reported 123 more coronavirus cases on Sunday, taking its total to 556, as well as two additional deaths that took its toll to four.
Among the latest cases, 75 were connected to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in the southern city of Daegu, the Korean Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
Origin elsewhere?
Although the coronavirus was discovered at Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, a study by several Chinese institutes suggests that it might have originated elsewhere.
Researchers at South China Agricultural University in Guangdong and the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in Yunnan province analysed the DNA sequences of 93 samples of the new coronavirus collected from 12 countries.
These samples had 58 kinds of genetic markers called haplotypes. Haplotype 13 and 38 are highly correlated with bat coronavirus RaTG13.
The patients with haplotypes 13 and 38 were from Shenzhen and Washington, who were infected in late December and early January during their visit to Wuhan. But there were no H13 and H38 haplotyes detected in Wuhan samples.
The study, which has not been peer reviewed, said the samples collected from patients who had been to the seafood market had haplotypes 1, 2, 8 to 12, which suggested that the coronavirus found in the seafood market could be originated from elsewhere.
The study also suggested that human-to-human transmission might have already started in November.
Church cluster among three new coronavirus cases in Singapore
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 Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was concerned about the number of coronavirus cases with no clear epidemiological link to China.
He called on African Union member states "to come together to be more aggressive in attacking" the virus, which causes a disease known as Covid-19.
"Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for Covid-19 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.
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