BEIJING, February 20. /TASS/. The death toll from the novel coronavirus in China has reached 2,118 people, China’s national health commission said on Thursday.
The number of confirmed cases topped 74,500, a total of 16,100 people have already recovered.
According to updated information, the nationwide novel coronavirus mortality rate now stands at 2.83%, slightly increasing from the 2.7% reported the day before.
The number of newly confirmed cases declined sharply in the past 24 hours, from 1,355 by Wednesday to 394 by Thursday.
The number of people, who died of the novel coronavirus in China’s province of Hubei, has risen to 2,029. The overall number of confirmed cases in the province, where the disease broke out last December, has reached 62,000. Over 10,300 of them have already recovered.
A total of 1,300 cases were reported in the southern province of Guangdong, over 1,200 - in the central province of Henan and over 1,100 in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
In the past 24 hours, 13 out of the 31 provinces of mainland China reported no newly confirmed cases.
In the capital Beijing, 395 coronavirus cases have been confirmed so far, four of them fatal. In the Heilongjiang province bordering Russia, 476 cases were confirmed, 12 people died and 123 others recovered.
All over the country, more than 126,300 residents, who were in close contact with those infected, are under medical supervision. Over 4,900 people have been quarantined.
According to medics, over 11,800 novel coronavirus patients remain in serious condition.
The Chinese authorities registered an outbreak of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV in the city of Wuhan. Outside China, cases of new coronavirus were confirmed in 25 other countries and territories, including in Russia. The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
In late December 2019, an outbreak of the pulmonary disease caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, an economic and industrial megacity with a population of 11 million. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, characterizing it as an epidemic with multiple locations. Apart from China, 25 other countries, including Russia, have reported confirmed coronavirus cases.