MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. The death toll among Chinese citizens who died of pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV has soared to 106, and 4,477 others have been infected, Wangyi news portal reported citing official data from Chinese regions.
According to AFP news agency, over the past day 24 people have died in the Hubei province. A total of 1,291 new cases of the disease have been registered there.
The biggest number of coronavirus cases has been recorded in the Hubei province (2,714 cases, 47 deaths) and its capital Wuhan (1,590 cases, 42 deaths). Some 80 people were infected in Beijing (one death) and another 21 in the Heilongjiang province, bordering on Russia (one death).
On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of an unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center in central China populated by 11 million people. On January 7, 2020, Chinese experts identified the infecting agent as coronavirus 2019-nCoV.
The new strain of coronavirus has already been identified in almost all Chinese provinces including Beijing and Shanghai as well as in other countries such as Australia, Malaysia, Nepal, France, Thailand, Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, the United States and Japan. The World Health Organization recognized the pneumonia outbreak in China as a national emergency but stopped short of declaring it an international one.