Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.
City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.
Wuhan, Feb 23: Ninety-seven more people died in China due to coronavirus, taking the death toll to 2,442, officials said on Sunday, as a team of WHO experts visited the worst-affected Wuhan city in Hubei province.
By the end of Saturday, a total of 2,442 people had died of the disease and 76,936 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said in its daily update on Sunday.
Ninety-six deaths were reported from Hubei province and one from Guangdong province on Saturday besides 648 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, it said.
Hubei province, where the virus first emerged in December last, reported 630 new confirmed cases, taking the total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province to 64,084, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The NHC also said China's daily number of newly cured and discharged novel coronavirus patients has surpassed that of new confirmed infections for the fifth consecutive day, indicating that cases of infections are coming down.
Saturday saw 2,230 people walk out of hospital after recovery, much higher than the number of the same day's new confirmed infections, which was 648, Xinhua reported.
A total of 22,888 patients infected with the novel coronavirus had been discharged from hospital after recovery by the end of Saturday, NHC said.
Meanwhile, a team of public health experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) visited Wuhan on Saturday to conduct a detailed probe about the virus which reportedly originated from a seafood market in the city in December last year.
The NHC said WHO experts along with their Chinese counterparts who formed a joint investigation team have held talks with the local health authority in Wuhan and visited relevant healthcare institutions.
The UN team comprises specialists from the United States, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore and South Korea, Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post reported.
The 12-member team, which arrived in China on Monday, was initially designated to visit only Beijing, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces, while the worst-affected Hubei province and its capital Wuhan were missing from the list.
However, the team was finally given permission to visit Wuhan by the Chinese government.
Besides controlling the spread of the virus, a major task for the WHO team along with their Chinese counterparts was to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease.
The NHC said on Saturday that the team had met top Chinese respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan in Guangdong, and visited the centre for disease control and prevention in Guangdong and the city of Shenzhen, and Sichuan.
The specialists also discussed quarantine measures, the wild animal trade and community prevention measures with their Chinese counterparts, it said.
Washington, Aug 8: The United States has reported 58,173 new coronavirus cases on Friday, bringing the total past 4.9 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.
"The first case of COVID-19 in the US was reported 198 days ago on 22.01.2020.Yesterday, the country reported 58,173 new confirmed cases and 1,243 deaths," it said.
The country is expected to cross the 5 million thresholds in the coming days. It leads the world both in terms of coronavirus cases and deaths estimated at over 161,300.
Overall, there have been 19.4 million cases confirmed globally and almost 721,800 people have died from virus-related complications. Another 11.7 million have recovered.
Beijing, Apr 17: China denied Friday it had covered up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak, as it responded to growing questions from Western powers led by the United States.
A foreign ministry spokesman acknowledged that the virus's rapid spread had contributed to undercounting that resulted in China raising its death toll earlier Friday, but he added "there has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment."
The allegations China is too close to the World Health Organization (WHO), were an attempt at "smearing" Beijing, Zhao said.
US President Donald Trump has questioned China's handling of the pandemic and whether it had been completely transparent since the virus emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year.
On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed doubts about China's virus response.
These doubts were spotlighted again on Friday when authorities in Wuhan, which has borne the brunt of Chinese deaths, abruptly raised its death toll by 50 percent -- or 1,290 deaths -- to a new total of 3,869.
That also pushed the nationwide death toll up sharply to 4,632, based on official national data released earlier in the day.
Wuhan authorities cited several reasons for the missed cases, including that the city's medical staff were overwhelmed in the early days as infections climbed, leading to "late reporting, omissions or mis-reporting".
Zhao said such miscounting was to be expected in the initial stages of a major disease outbreak.
US President Donald Trump -- under fire himself for initially denying the seriousness of the pandemic -- has accused the WHO of doing the same and being too trusting of China's assurances over the outbreak.
On Tuesday he announced a suspension of US funding to the world body.
Asked about the US allegations, Zhao defended the WHO and China.
"I think they are all smearing China and cooking up stories about China," he said, without specifying which countries he was referring to.
China has largely brought the contagion under control domestically via tough measures including the unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and tens of millions of people in surrounding areas, but not before it spread worldwide.
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