Coronavirus: Death toll surpasses SARS fatalities, over 800 dead in China
Health officials in Hubei, China, said the deadly coronavirus can spread through direct transmission, contact transmission or aerosol transmission.
FollowBeijing: Surpassing the fatalities caused by the SARS epidemic in 2003, the death toll due to the novel coronavirus has reached 810 in China.
"According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), SARS coronavirus killed 774 people as it spread in 26 countries during the nine-month epidemic," as quoted by the Washington Post. The latest figures from the Chinese health officials show that 2,649 people have recovered and are discharged from the hospital.
Around 33,738 are currently being treated for pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus, reported Sputnik.
Earlier, the local Hubei health commission said that the death toll from the new coronavirus in the province stood at 780, while 1,400 people have recovered.
Local authorities have said that the novel coronavirus can spread through direct transmission, contact transmission, or aerosol transmission.
"Aerosol transmission refers to the mixing of the virus with droplets in the air to form aerosols, which causes infection after inhalation, according to medical experts," Zeng Qun, deputy head of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, told China Daily on Saturday. "As such, we have called on the public to raise their awareness of the prevention and control of the disease caused by family gatherings," he added.
China has imposed quarantine and travel restrictions, affecting the movement of 56 million people in more than a dozen cities, amid fears that the transmission rate will accelerate.
The novel coronavirus was first detected in China's Wuhan in late December and has since spread to more than 25 countries.
The World Health Organisation has declared a global health emergency in the wake of the outbreak.
Meanwhile, a 26-year-old man from Pune in Maharashtra, who recently returned from Philippines via Hong Kong and Singapore, was on Saturday evening admitted in the quarantine facility here for suspected novel coronavirus infection.
The man developed symptoms like body ache and weakness on February 7, an official of the civic-run Naidu Hospital informed.
