Corona-virus death toll continues to rise to 361 as infected show recovery

A member of a military medical team draws blood from a resident who has been cured from novel coronavirus in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. Xinhua

For the first time, the death toll in the ongoing corona-virus outbreak in China and the world had climbed to 361 until Sunday morning.

One of the deaths was of a Chinese man who had returned to Philippines and who had succumbed to his illness over the weekend, while the rest were all in China.

Confirmed cases in China grew to more than 16,500 with an estimated 444 cured and a further 181 cases around the globe in 27 countries and territories.

On February 2, China shuts down another major city as it closed roads and restricted the movement of residents in Wenzhou, a city with a population of 9 million that is located 800 km away from Wuhan, in Hubei province. The Zhejiang province, where Wenzhou is located, has the highest number of confirmed cases outside the Hubei province.

On January 30, the novel corona-virus total case count surpassed that for SARS which affected 8,096 people worldwide.

Germany, Japan, Vietnam and the United States have reported cases in patients who didn’t personally visit China, but contracted the virus from someone else who had visited Wuhan, China. These cases of human to human transmission are the most worrisome, according to the WHO.

The novel corona-virus’ case fatality rate is currently estimated at around 2%, according to the WHO [16] on January 29, 2020. A prior estimate [9] had put that number at 3%, between 2% and 4%). Fatality rate can change as a virus can mutate, according to epidemiologists.

Once the province Hubei where the epicenter Wuhan is situated, is removed from the calculation, the national China, mortality rate drops to 0.3%. Within the Hubei province, the mortality rate is about 1% when excluding the city of Wuhan where it is 5.5%.

For comparison, the case fatality rate with seasonal flu is less than 0.01% death per every 10,000 cases. Mortality rate for SARS was 10%, and for MERS 34%.