Beijing: The death toll in China’s novel corona virus climbed to 2,345 with 109 more deaths reported while the confirmed cases rose to 76,288.
A team of WHO experts currently in the country is expected to visit the worst-affected Wuhan city today to investigate the COVID-19 outbreak.
A total of 397 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported on Friday, while 109 deaths were reported from 31 provincial-level region. According to the National Health Commission’s report, “By the end of Friday, a total of 2,345 deaths and 76,288 confirmed cases were reported from all over the country”.
It said,”Among the deaths, 106 were from the Hubei Province, the epicentre of the virus, one each from Hebei province, Shanghai and Xinjiang”.”Hubei Province reported 366 new confirmed cases and 106 new deaths on Friday.The total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province is 63,454″,the report added.
All over China, 20,659 patients infected with the virus have been discharged from hospital after recovery by the end of Friday, NHC said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the WHO-led team of international experts, currently in China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak, will travel Wuhan today.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 of the WHO team along with their Chinese counterparts was to come up with a standard medicine to cure the disease. Tedros said, “WHO is also working with partners to safeguard the health of the members of the team and take appropriate measures when they return to their countries of origin”.
The disease has now spread to five Chinese prisons in the provinces of Hubei, Shandong and Zhejiang where 447 cases of the virus have been reported.Prisons across the country were ordered to step-up monitoring track records of all prison guards and officers to prevent the spread of the virus, a press note said.
On Friday, Beijing saw a sudden spike in the cases after the central city hospital reported 36 novel coronavirus infections, a sharp increase from the nine cases two weeks earlier, leading to fears of a potential explosion of number of infection cases in the city.
Beijing has so far reported 396 cases of novel coronavirus infection, with four deaths.