Coronavirus epidemic caused 109 additional deaths on Friday, February 21 in mainland China, local health officials reported, bringing the number of deaths linked to the epidemic to 2,345 since it started in the center from the country.
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In its daily report, the National Health Commission reported 397 new cases of contamination on Friday in mainland China, where 76,288 people have been diagnosed with the virus since the virus appeared. This is a number of additional cases lower than that reported the day before. According to official data, 889 new cases of infection were identified Thursday in the country.
Health officials in Hubei province, the focus of the epidemic, said on Saturday that the virus had caused another 106 deaths on Thursday. They said they had confirmed 366 additional cases of contamination, against 631 new cases the day before.
Globally, the epidemic affects 26 countries and territories outside of mainland China, and it has killed ten people.
Italy recorded the first death linked to the coronavirus epidemic on Friday. The 78-year-old man was hospitalized in the city of Padua, Veneto, a region in northern Italy, according to the Italian agency Ansa.
The announcement of this death was made in the aftermath of a wind of panic in Italy: fifteen patients were listed, bringing to twenty the total number in the country, the most affected in Europe. The authorities then closed public places in eleven cities in northern Italy.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, questioned in Brussels by the Italian press, wanted to be reassuring by stressing that Italy " applies a very high level of precaution ".
Super spread
South Korea reported 142 new infections on Saturday, bringing the total to 346, most of which are in Daegu, a city of 2.5 million, where a " super spread event " occurred in a church, according to the authorities.
According to the WHO, the " window of opportunity " to contain the international spread of the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic is closing. " Even if the window of opportunity narrows, we still have a possibility of containing the epidemic, " said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to whom journalists were asking if the detection of new cases of covid-19 in Lebanon and Canada and new deaths in Iran were a turning point in the epidemic. " If we waste this opportunity, we will have a serious problem in our hands, " he added.
