Coronavirus has officially claimed more lives than SARS outbreak in 2003 as the total death toll since the outbreak of the flu-like virus reached 811 on Saturday, February 8, surpassing the 774 fatalities seen nearly two decades ago from SARS which also infected 8,096 people worldwide according to data from the World Health Organization.
China’s National Health Commission also said on Saturday that the total number of coronavirus cases has reached 37,198. In China, 2,656 new cases were reported in the 24 hours ending at midnight Saturday. Most of them were in the central province of Hubei were the first patients fell sick in December. That was down by about 20% from the 3,399 new cases reported in the previous 24-hour period.
The virus which has been confirmed in about two dozen countries has only claimed the lives of two people outside mainland China; a Chinese man in the Philippines and a man in Hong Kong.