Coronavirus update: China reports 2,009 new cases on Sunday, Europe confirms first death

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported on Sunday 2,009 new cases, down from 2,641 the previous day, per Reuters.

Additional Headlines:

142 new deaths were reported vs.143 seen on the previous day. All but four of the new deaths were in Hubei.

China’s latest figures showed 68,500 cases of the illness and 1,665 deaths, most of them in Hubei.

A Chinese health official said that the intense containment efforts to curb the coronavirus spread were beginning to work.

China’s Finance Ministry issued CNY8 billion ($1.15 billion) in subsidy funds to support local authorities’ epidemic control efforts, CNY3.5 billion of which are earmarked for Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, another 70 people tested positive on a virus-stricken cruise ship quarantined in Japan.

On Saturday, Europe reported the first coronavirus fatality after an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus died in France.

French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said on Saturday, “this is the first fatality by the coronavirus outside Asia, the first death in Europe.”

“We have to get our health system ready to face a possible pandemic propagation of the virus, and therefore the spreading of the virus across France,” she added.

Buzyn also said that out of 12 cases in France, four patients have been successfully treated and have checked out of hospital. 

Separately, while speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the coronavirus outbreak still an emergency for China, adding that “it is impossible to tell where the epidemic will spread.”