Over 7,700 cases of contamination in total and 170 deaths in China

Death toll linked to the new coronavirus rose to 170 in China, with more than 1,700 new cases of contamination registered in the country, the Chinese government announced on Thursday.

Of the new deaths reported, 37 were in the Hubei region, the capital of which is the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, and the 38th in the southwestern province of Sichuan. There have also been 1,032 new cases of infection in Hubei, and some 700 elsewhere in China, health officials said. The first case was recorded in Tibet, it was said.

Over 99% of cases recorded in China

The number of contaminations amounts to approximately 7,700 cases, more than the number – 5,327 – of patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). In 2002-2003, this coronavirus caused a total of 774 deaths, including 349 in Chinese territory. More than sixty cases of infection have been reported in other countries, less than 1% of the global number.

“The whole world has to be alert, the whole world has to act,” said Michael Ryan, the director of emergency programs at WHO on Wednesday, who will hold another emergency meeting on Thursday. It will be devoted to “the question of whether the current epidemic constitutes a public health emergency of international concern,” said the organization’s chief executive, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, upon his return from Beijing.