FFeb 22,2020: Fears mounted Saturday over the rise of new cases and fatalities outside China from the new coronavirus outbreak, as the World Health Organization warned of a shrinking window to stem the spread of the deadly disease.
The warning came as the first European died from the new COVID-19 strain, which first emerged in December in central China but has now spread to over 25 countries and caused over a dozen deaths outside the country.
A 78-year old Italian from the Veneto region died in the hospital after testing positive for the virus.
Italy has locked down ten towns and asked over 50,000 people to stay home amid a flurry of cases in the area — a move with echoes of China’s lockdown of entire cities in Hubei province at the centre of the outbreak.
In China, the number of cases outside Hubei, where millions remain under effective quarantine, has been generally declining, although new hotspots were found in several prisons and hospitals Friday.
But just 31 new cases were reported outside the central province Saturday, as the national number of cases rose past 76,000.
Concerns have also risen about the reliability of the official data, however, after Hubei officials changed methods of counting cases and amended their figures again.
A WHO-led team of experts are set to visit Wuhan, the capital of the province, on Saturday.
Meanwhile WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the “window of opportunity” to contain the international spread of the outbreak was “narrowing”, as cases surged across the Middle East and in South Korea.
He warned that if countries did not quickly mobilise to fight the spread of the virus, “this outbreak could go in any direction. It could even be messy.”
