BEIJING, January 29. /TASS/. An epidemic of pneumonia in China’s capital city, triggered by the coronavirus 2019-nCoV, has entered a new stage, with growing numbers of people catching the disease, some of them for a second time, Beijing’s health committee said in a statement circulated on Wednesday.

"An epidemic in Beijing was imported [from another region], and numerous cases of mass infections have been reported," the statement said. "Our region is seeing a regular growth in secondary cases of the disease [patients not leaving Beijing — TASS], and the number of carriers of the virus is growing, as well as the number of young patients," it stressed.

According to updated reports, the number of people infected with China’s coronavirus has reached 101 in Beijing, and one person has died.

China’s National Health Commission reported on Wednesday that 132 people had died from the new coronavirus, and the number of people infected with the 2019-nCoV has hit 6,012.

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 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 Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Canada, Malaysia, Nepal, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United States, Thailand, France, Germany, Sri Lanka 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. WHO specialists were dispatched to China.