Italy reported its first death from the new virus from China earlier today and the number of people infected more than quadrupled due to a cluster of cases that prompted officials to order schools, restaurants and businesses to close.
State-run RAI television reported a 78-year-old man, one of two people in northern Veneto region to have been infected, died yesterday.
In Lombardy, at least 14 new cases were confirmed, representing the first infections in Italy acquired through secondary contagion and bringing the country's total to 21.
The cluster was located in a handful of tiny towns southeast of Milan, said Lombardy regional health chief Giulio Gallera.
Japan currently has reported one death with 109 infected with the virus. This is not including the 634 cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
Cases of the virus swelled today in South Korea, making the country the newest front in a widening global outbreak centered in China and now reverberating elsewhere.
Officials in South Korea said two people have died and 346 have been infected with the virus, 142 new cases have been reported which quadruple the number of cases it had two days earlier.
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Daegu has emerged as the latest front in the widening global fight against COVID-19, with the city's 2.5 million residents urged to stay inside, wearing masks even indoors to stem further infection.
Mayor Kwon Young-jin made a nationally televised appeal yesterday for those preventative measures, warning that a rash of new cases could overwhelm the health system. He pleaded for help from the country’s central government.
Schools were shuttered yesterday, churches told worshipers to stay away and some mass gatherings were banned.
The multiplying caseload in South Korea showed the ease with which the illness can spread.
In Iran four deaths have been reported, with 18 in total testing positive for the virus.
The World Health Organisation warned that clusters not directly linked to travel, such as the ones in South Korea and Iran, suggest that time may be running out to contain the outbreak.
“The window of opportunity is still there. But our window of opportunity is narrowing,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We need to act quickly before it closes completely.”
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Tedros singled out Iran’s discovery of 18 cases and four deaths in two days — and that a traveller from Iran carried the virus to Lebanon, and another traveller from Iran to Canada.
Concerns over the spread of the virus, prompted authorities in Iran this week to close all schools and Shiite seminaries in Qom, about 130 kilometres south of Tehran.
The total number of cases in China's Hubei province including Wuhan is 63,454 with 2,250 deaths reported.
