More deaths recorded in China’s coronavirus outbreak, 24,324 infected

The death toll arising from the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus in China has risen from 427 to 490 just as Hubei province; the epicenter of the outbreak reported the death of 65 people from the flu-like infection.

China’s National Health Commission said on Wednesday that the number of confirmed infections in the country rose to 24,324 after an additional 3,887 people were diagnosed with the virus.

In a related development, the United Kingdom plans second and final evacuation flight for citizens in China after Britain’s Foreign Office said late on Tuesday that it would charter another civilian aircraft to evacuate British nationals from Wuhan.

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“The Foreign Office is chartering a second and final UK flight with space to help all British nationals and their dependants remaining in Hubei to leave,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement.

The statement comes after the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday tried to douse the growing fears arising from the growing spread of the coronavirus, saying the world is “not in a pandemic” over the disease which has killed 427 people as at Tuesday.

The director of global infectious hazard preparedness at the WHO, Sylvie Briand, said: “Currently we are not in a pandemic. We are at a phase where we have an epidemic of Coronavirus with multiple foci and we try to extinguish each of these foci.”

Briand said the WHO currently has no evidence of mutation of the virus, adding that “it is quite a stable virus.”

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