Daily death toll from virus tops 100
More than 1,000 total deaths have been recorded
BEIJING — China’s daily death toll from new virus has topped 100 for first time, with more than 1,000 total deaths recorded, the health ministry announced Tuesday, as the spread of the contagion shows little sign of abating.
Though more offices and stores in China have reopened after the extended Lunar New Year break, many people appear to be staying home. Public health authorities are watching closely to see whether workers returning to cities and business resuming worsens the spread of the virus.
Another 108 deaths were reported over the previous 24 hours, the National Health Commission said in a daily update. That increased the total to 1,016 deaths, well beyond the toll taken by the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, which comes from the same family of coronaviruses.
Newly confirmed cases fell to 2,478 from 3,062 the day before, bringing the total to 42,638 on the mainland, some of whom have been curedl.
The outbreak’s persistence is dimming optimism that the near-quarantine of some 60 million people and other measures might be working.
Britain, meanwhile, declared the virus a “serious and imminent threat to public health,” and said it would forcibly detain infected people if necessary. France tested scores of children and their parents after five British tourists contracted the virus at a ski resort.
The director-general of the World Health Organization said that the agency is still unable to predict where the outbreak is heading, but that he believes there is still an opportunity to contain it.