BEIJING: Coronavirus outbreak has shown a little decline in China as number of new cases decline but the death toll by CONVID 19 with last day number of 109 has crossed the figure of 2,345, the National Health Commission said on Saturday.
Another 397 new cases were reported nationwide, down from nearly 900 officially reported Friday, bringing the total number of cases to over 76,000.
The drop in new cases of the novel coronavirus came as officials in Hubei province — whose capital city Wuhan is the epicentre the outbreak — were ordered to revise figures to clear “doubt” around the data.
The number of new cases nationwide for February 19 was revised up to 820 up from 394 previously reported, the National Health Commission said Saturday. It also adjusted upwards the total confirmed cases for February 20 by over 400 cases to 75,891.
The decision to amend Hubei’s past data, which was announced on Friday by local authorities, is the latest in a string of changes made to Hubei’s counting method — further complicating efforts to track the spread of the illness.
Last week, Chinese health officials added patients from Hubei who had been diagnosed via clinical methods including lung imaging on top of those confirmed by lab tests.
But on Thursday, Hubei officials backtracked the decision and deducted 279 cases — which they were ordered to re-add to the count on Friday.
Fears mounted Saturday over the rise of new cases and fatalities outside China from the new coronavirus outbreak, as the World Health Organisation warned of a shrinking window to stem the spread of the deadly disease.
The warning came as the first European died from the new COVID-19 strain, which first emerged in December in central China but has now spread to over 25 countries and caused over a dozen deaths outside the country.
The number of cases outside Hubei, where millions remain under effective quarantine, has been generally declining, although new hotspots were found in several prisons and hospitals Friday.
But just 31 new cases were reported outside the central province Saturday, as the national number of cases rose past 76,000.
Concerns have also risen about the reliability of the official data, however, after Hubei officials changed methods of counting cases and amended their figures again.
Meanwhile WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the “window of opportunity” to contain the international spread of the outbreak was “narrowing”, as cases surged across the Middle East and in South Korea.
He warned that if countries did not quickly mobilise to fight the spread of the virus, “this outbreak could go in any direction. It could even be messy.”
Read more: After China, coronavirus infections on rise in South Korea: emergency declared
