Coronavirus death toll surpasses 1,000 as it killed more than 100 in the Chinese province at the outbreak’s center on Monday – and horrifying map suggests thousands of travelers may have spread it from Wuhan to nearly 400 cities worldwide
- On Monday, officials in Hubei reported 103 new deaths in the province where the coronavirus outbreak began
- The global death toll is now at least 1,013, with all but two of those deaths in Hubei
- In Wuhan, officials confirmed the virus claimed its first American victim there on Friday night
- More than 3,000 passengers and crew members are now quarantined on a Diamond Princess ship in Japan
- At least 136 on the ship are infected – including 23 Americans – and cases doubled overnight
- WHO experts finally landed in China to attempt to help authorities there contain and study the outbreak
The coronavirus outbreak has now killed more 1,000 people the world over, according to data form the Chinese government released Monday evening.
A total of 103 people died in a single day in China’s Hubei province on Monday – the highest toll recorded in any one 24-hour period since the outbreak began in December.
It comes the same day as World Health Organization (WHO) experts and scientists have finally arrived in China to help officials there contain and study the outbreak. that’s now struck at least 42,729 people worldwide.
Over the weekend, the first death of an American from coronavirus was also reported in Wuhan, the Hubei city where the virus is believed to have first made the jump from game sold at an open-air market to humans.
Now, cases have been confirmed in at least 24 other countries, although only two of the confirmed deaths occurred outside China.
More than 1,000 people have died in the coronavirus outbreak that’s spread to at least 24 countries worldwide as of Monday
As the coronavirus outbreak spread to another 10 people in Hong Kong between Sunday and Monday, people there began to protest that its borders should be close to contain the deadly virus that’s killed one there
On a single cruise ship docked and quarantined in Japan, at least 136 people have contracted coronavirus – including 23 Americans – with the number of passengers or crew on board testing positive for the virus doubling over Sunday night.
The number of new cases reported each day in China does seem to be slowing, and travel restrictions appear to be keeping many countries case counts fairly stable, but global health experts warn the outbreak is far from over.
In fact, earlier on Monday, the WHO warned that the more than 40,000 cases already reported by then were likely just ‘the tip of the iceberg,’ as they expect that people with mild or no symptoms have not been diagnosed – yet – leading to an underestimate of total illnesses worldwide.
As of the latest figures, China still has the vast majority of coronavirus cases, with 42,268 and 1,011 deaths.
Of those patients, more than 7,300 are in ‘serious/critical’ condition.
There are now 391 cases outside China with cases of coronavirus, but only one death has been confirmed in the Philippines, and one in Hong Kong.
Coronaviruses are a common cause of respiratory illness and, even for severe ones like the 2003 SARS virus and the current outbreak – temporarily dubbed 2019-nCoV – they are not particularly dangerous to most healthy people.
But SARS infections had a relatively high death rate, killing nearly 10 percent of those it infected. The current coronavirus has a death rate below 2 percent.
The vast majority of cases and deaths are still in China’s Hubei province, where health professionals in protective gear work 24-hours a day to care for thousands of victims in clinical condition
Some experts believe that the rate will fall as low as one percent, as more, milder illnesses are diagnosed worldwide.
The same good news for the death rate is bad news for the containment of 2019-nCoV.
In less than two months since it was discovered, the new coronavirus has spread to 24 countries, surpassing the number death toll and number of infections for six months of the SARS outbreak.
And it seems to pass quite readily between humans, perhaps even when they don’t display symptoms.
For that reason, officials in the US, UK and most countries anticipate that they will see more and more cases of coronavirus, even though rates are presently low, with 12 positive patients confirmed in the US and eight in the UK.
In its short existence, the corona virus has had vast opportunities to travel far and wide.
A map created by Southampton University researchers shows how 60,000 out of a total of five million people who have traveled out of left Wuhan since the beginning of the outbreak and before the city was fully locked down have crisscrossed the globe.
Researchers used a combination cell phone tracking data and flight trackers to trace travelers paths.
The result is a red scribble of trajectories to 382 cities elsewhere in China and in countries the world over.
A map based on data from flight and cell phone data tracking by Southampton University researchers shows how 60,000 out of some 60,000 people who left Wuhan after the coronavirus outbreak began but before the city was locked down have crisscrossed the globe
In the US, two of the 12 patients caught coronavirus from their spouses, who were well enough to pass travel screens and display no symptoms on their way back from China, but carried the virus and passed it on to their husbands or wives.
And in the UK, one Brighton man became a ‘super-spreader,’ passing coronavirus to another three associates, meaning his infection accounts for fully half of the eight people confirmed to have the infection there.
In the hopes of containing the virus, Wuhan was locked down on January 23. City officials closed off all roads in and out, arriving and departing flights were canceled, and public transportation was halted altogether.
Its created a humanitarian issue in the city, but other countries have subsequently followed suit, restricting or banning travel to and from Wuhan and China.
The US is now rerouting all passengers who have been to China within the past two weeks through 11 airports where they will be screened for any evidence they could have contracted coronavirus.
Anyone who’s been to Wuhan in the prior 14 days will be subject to a mandatory federal quarantine – the first of its kind in 50 years in the US – at one of 13 military bases near the 11 airports.
Both the US and the UK have evacuated citizens from the epicenter of the outbreak and placed them under mandatory quarantines.
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