The number of people killed by the coronavirus outbreak has overtaken the global death toll of the Sars epidemic, with at least 800 deaths now confirmed.
A daily update from Hubei province’s health commission said a further 81 people had died since Friday. The majority of people who have been killed, 780, are from the province. It includes a doctor, Li Wenliang, who died last week and was one of the first people to raise the alarm.
More than 37,100 people are now confirmed to have been infected worldwide, with a jump of 2,147 in Hubei since Friday. The World Health Organization said the number of cases being reported in China was “stabilising” but warned it was too early to say whether the virus had peaked.
The only people to have died outside the Chinese mainland are a Chinese man who died in the Philippines and a 39-year-old in Hong Kong.
The Sars outbreak killed 774 people worldwide in 2002-2003. The new virus is believed to have emerged in 2019 in a market that sells wild animals in Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, before spreading across the country. In response to the outbreak, the Chinese government sealed off the city in late January.
On Saturday the final UK evacuation flight left Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, the Foreign Office said.
The plane, which was carrying more than 200 passengers including British government staff and military medics, was expected to arrive at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire at around 5.30am on Sunday with evacuees to be taken to Kents Hill Park, a conference centre and hotel in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Returnees would be quarantined there for 14 days.
Anyone displaying symptoms would not have been permitted to board the plane in Wuhan, and those on board the flight would be assessed again on landing, UK authorities said. Anyone developing symptoms on the flight would be taken to a separate cabin on the plane.
The UK government has also increased the number of laboratories that can test for the disease, from one to 12.
Brazil also evacuated nationals from Wuhan on Saturday, with 34 people flown from China to an airforce base in Anápolis, 150km from the capital, Brasília, where they will remain in isolation for 18 days.
Also travelling on the two planes from Wuhan were four Poles and a Chinese national, who disembarked during refuelling in Warsaw, Poland.
