China coronavirus outbreak turns more virulent as death toll soars to 426

Beijing/Wuhan: China's coronavirus outbreak showed no signs of abating as the death toll rose sharply to 426 with more than 20,000 confirmed cases, amid a shocking report of Chinese officials silencing a doctor in Wuhan who first reported the presence of the deadly virus in December last year.

China, which has intensified its efforts to contain the spread of the virus, on Monday opened a 1,000-bed makeshift hospital built in record nine days in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.

Another 1,300 bed hospital is set to be ready on Wednesday. Both will be run by hundreds of military medical personnel.

Authorities in Wuhan on Tuesday said they would build eight more mobile cabin hospitals to treat the patients, China Daily reported.

The total number of cases soared to 20,522 raising concerns over its increasing virulence, China's National Health Commission reported on Tuesday.

Monday saw 64 deaths with 3,235 new confirmed cases mostly in Hubei province, from where India evacuated 647 of its citizens during the weekend.

The Commission said that the condition of 492 people remained serious while another 5,072 new suspected cases have been reported on Monday.

On Tuesday, Hong Kong, which has 15 confirmed cases, reported its first coronavirus death. Macao reported eight cases and Taiwan 10.

All the Chinese cities including Beijing have been reporting daily increase in the cases of the virus, which has no cure yet.

In the midst of growing concerns over the spread of the virus, a shocking story has emerged on how local Chinese officials suppressed and harassed a doctor in Wuhan who raised the alarm about the virus in December last year.

Li Wenliang dropped a bombshell on his medical school alumni group on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat that seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and quarantined in his hospital, CNN reported.

Li explained that, according to a test he had seen, the illness was a coronavirus -- a large family of viruses that includes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which led to 800 death in China and the world in 2003.

The 34-year-old doctor working in Wuhan told his friends to warn their loved ones privately. But within hours screenshots of his messages had gone viral -- without his name being blurred.

He was one of several medics targeted by police for trying to blow the whistle on the deadly virus in the early weeks of the outbreak, the CNN report said.

The virus has now spread to over 20 countries. 

The Philippines reported the first overseas death from the virus on Sunday while 159 cases have been reported from abroad so far, according to the Commission. India has reported three cases of the coronavirus. All the three patients from Kerala recently returned from the affected Wuhan city.

India on Tuesday further tightened visa rules by cancelling the existing visas for Chinese and foreigners who had visited the country in the last two weeks.

On February 2, India temporarily suspended e-visa facility for Chinese travellers and foreigners residing in China in view of the coronavirus outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Currently, 647 Indians and seven Maldivians, who have been evacuated from Wuhan and Hubei are in 14-day quarantine at a medical camp in Manesar, near Delhi.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told the media here that 16 foreigners have been infected with the virus in China.

She, however, declined to provide details of their nationalities in her Tuesday media briefing, citing privacy concerns.

According to reports, those infected included four Pakistanis and two Australians. Wuhan has thousands of foreigners as it is an education hub. Hundreds of Pakistani have been pleading with their government to evacuate them citing successful evacuation by the Indian government.

China has struggled to contain the virus despite implementing unprecedented measures, including virtually locking down more than 50 million people in Hubei.

While the virus cases increased by the hour, Chinese health officials attributed the spiralling rate of cases and the death toll to shortages of hospitals mainly Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan.

Also Chinese officials have converted the national auditorium and gymnasium in Wuhan into a hospital to exclusively treat growing number of coronavirus cases.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that the outbreak of the deadly virus does not yet constitute a "pandemic".

A Chinese health official argued on Tuesday that the current case fatality rate (CFR) of the novel coronavirus infection on the Chinese mainland has dropped to 2.1 per cent.

The CFR remained stable after an initial 2.3 per cent recorded at the beginning of the outbreak, Jiao Yahui from the National Health Commission told a media briefing here on epidemic.

The CFR is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease.

"China is going all out to improve admission and survival rates and reduce infection and fatality rates," Jiao said. 

"This fatality rate is pretty low in other regions in China. So we are very confident, and there is no need for panic," she said.