Coronavirus: Death toll rises to 56 in China
Beijing: The death toll in the deadly new coronavirus in China rose to 56 on Sunday with confirmed cases of viral affliction reaching 1,975 and 324 of them being critical, Chinese health authorities said.
The new type of pneumonia, officially being described as 2019-nCoV, has resulted in 56 deaths, the National Health Commission said.
A total of 2,684 suspected cases have also been reported so far, it said.
While Wuhan and 17 others cities in Hubei province remained the epicentre of the viral disease outbreak with most of the deaths having taken place there, the cases have started rising steadily in most of the Chinese provinces and cities, including Beijing.
Hubei province added 323 new confirmed cases of infection on Jan 25. It also reported 13 new deaths.
A total of 1,052 cases of coronavirus were reported till Jan 25 in the province, with 129 being critical, besides 52 deaths, state run Global Times reported.
Ten new coronavirus afflictions were reported till Saturday in Beijing, taking the number of cases to 51 in the city, the report said.
Shanghai, China's biggest city has reported 40 cases so far, it added.
Amid the situation becoming grim, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday said China is facing a "grave situation" but he exuded confidence that the country would "win the battle" against the coronavirus epidemic.
Stepping up all-round efforts to contain the fast spreading SARS-like virus, China on Saturday announced it would build another 1,300-bed makeshift hospital in Wuhan in the next 15 days in addition to another 1,000-bed hospital being built presently in the city and expected to be completed in 10 days, to treat more cases of the deadly virus.
The feverish pace at which the hospitals are being built indicates China is preparing to treat far more patients, considering the speed at which the virus is spreading.
The virus has spread to Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Nepal, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and the US as of Thursday. Japan on Friday had reported a second confirmed case.
The confirmed cases in China crossed the 1,000-mark for the first time on Friday, rising sharply to 1,287 with 237 people reported critical, the Commission had said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Japan will evacuate all its nationals from China's quarantined city of Wuhan, the epicentre of a deadly virus, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Sunday.
"We have decided to send back all (Japanese citizens in Wuhan) to Japan if they wish so, by every means including a chartered flight," Abe told reporters.
"We are coordinating with the Chinese government at various levels, and we will accelerate the process to realise a swift implementation" of the evacuation from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, Abe said.
Earlier, a foreign ministry official told AFP that 430 Japanese were in Hubei province.
The move comes as several other countries are arranging plans to evacuate their personnel and citizens.
In an ongoing process to curb virus, one province and three major cities in China will ban long-distance buses, authorities said Sunday, as they scramble to contain a deadly new virus that has spread across the country.
The eastern Shandong province, with a population of 100 million people, will suspend long-distance buses entering the province, state broadcaster CCTV reported, following the announcement of similar measures in the cities of Tianjin, Beijing and Xi'an. Inter-city buses in the province will only be allowed to leave if stations have temperature screening measures, CCTV said.
Further gathered information says that the United States is arranging a flight to evacuate personnel and American citizens trapped at the epicentre of a deadly virus in central China, the US State Department said on Sunday.
The flight will leave on Tuesday from the city of Wuhan and take people to San Francisco, the department said in an email to Americans in China, warning that there would be limited space for private citizens.
