China on Sunday announced a “significant drop” in coronavirus cases, as the WHO team scrambled to assist Beijing in containing the spread of the virus that has claimed 1,665 lives so far.
The death toll from China’s coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic has climbed to 1,665 on Saturday after 142 more people died, mostly in the worst-hit Hubei Province, and the confirmed cases jumped to 68,500.
China’s National Health Commission(NHC) confirmed 2,009 new cases across the country.
Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, reported 1,843 of the new cases. The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in Hubei to 56,249 cases.
Of the new deaths, 139 were in Hubei, two in Sichuan, and one in Hunan, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The report said 9,419 infected patients had been discharged from hospitals after recovery so far.
The Commission announced that the proportion of severe and critical cases of the novel coronavirus disease among all confirmed cases has decreased significantly in China.
“In Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic, the proportion of severe cases among the confirmed cases fell from a peak of 32.4 per cent on January 28 to 21.6 per cent on February 15,” Mi Feng, a spokesperson with the NHC said during a media briefing here.
Mi said the proportion in other parts of Hubei Province also dropped from a peak of 18.4 per cent on January 27 to 11.1 per cent on February 15.
The percentage in other provinces in China also decreased significantly, falling from a peak of 15.9 per cent on January 27 to 7.2 per cent on February 15, Mi was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.
He said the change in status of the coronavirus cases has proven the current epidemic prevention and control measures were effective.
The authorities and medics are carrying out differentiated measures on the patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19, close contacts of the confirmed cases, and fever patients, he said.
“The differentiated measures ensure that a large number of mild cases are treated in time, reducing the possibility of becoming severe cases,” he said.
Mi’s assertion of the cases dropping significantly came as the 12 member World Health Organisation experts team is set to begin working along with the Chinese health experts to speed up the containment process of the deadly virus.