China details 80% cases mild THIEVES MAKE OFF WITH 6,000 SURGICAL MASKS

Beijing, Feb. 18: Health officials in China have published the first details on nearly 45,000 cases of the novel coronavirus disease that originated there, saying more than 80 per cent have been mild and new ones seem to be falling since early this month, although it's far too soon to tell whether the outbreak has peaked.

Monday’s report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention gives the World Health Organisation a “clearer picture of the outbreak, how it’s developing and where it’s headed,” WHO’s director-general said at a news conference.

“It’s too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. The new disease, called Covid-19, first emerged in late December in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, and has spread to more than two dozen other nations.

China says more than 70,000 people have been infected and 1,770 have died in mainland China, but numbers are squishy because the country is counting many cases based on symptoms rather than the methods WHO uses.

The new study reports on 44,672 cases confirmed in China as of February 11. The virus caused severe disease such as pneumonia in 14 per cent of them and critical illness in five per cent.

The fatality rate for these confirmed cases is 2.3 per cent — 2.8 per cent for males versus 1.7 per cent for females.

That’s lower than for SARS and MERS, two similar viruses, but COVID-19 ultimately could prove more deadly if it

Tokyo, Feb. 18: Thieves in Japan have made off with some 6,000 surgical masks from a hospital, with the country facing a mass shortage and a huge price hike online due to the coronavirus.

Four boxes containing the face masks disappeared from a locked storage facility at the Japanese Red Cross hospital in the western port city of Kobe, a hospital official said on Tuesday.

“We still have a large number of masks — enough to continue our daily operations at the hospital, but this is so deplorable,” the official told AFP. Police have launched an investigation as they suspect the thieves intend to resell the masks.

Masks have sold out at many drug and discount stores across the nation as number of infections have increased. spreads to far more people than the others did. Ordinary flu has a fatality rate of 0.1 per cent yet kills hundreds of thousands because it infects millions each year.

The COVID-19 cases include relatively few children, and the risk of death rises with age. It’s higher among those with other health problems — more than 10 per cent for those with heart disease, for example, and higher among those in Hubei province versus elsewhere in China. Cases seem to have been declining since February 1.