Virus toll nears 1,400, six health workers among victims
The death toll from the Covid-19 virus neared 1,400 yesterday with six medical workers among the victims, underscoring the country’s struggle to contain a deepening health crisis.
Nearly 64,000 people are now recorded as having fallen ill from the virus in China, with officials revealing that 1,716 health workers had been infected as of Tuesday.
The grim figure comes a week after an outpouring of grief and public anger over the death of a whistleblowing doctor who had been reprimanded and silenced by police after raising the alarm about the virus in December.
The scale of the epidemic swelled this week after authorities in central Hubei province, the epicentre of the contagion, changed their criteria to count the number of cases, adding thousands of new patients to their tally.
The health emergency in China has caused fears of more global contagion, with more than two-dozen countries reporting hundreds of cases among them. Three people have died outside mainland China.
The US accused China of lacking transparency.
The majority of cases of infections among health workers was in Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, where many have lacked proper masks and gear to protect themselves in hospitals dealing with a deluge of patients.
Some 80,000 medical workers were involved in combatting the epidemic in Wuhan, the city government said earlier this month.
Authorities in Hubei province on Thursday started counting patients who were ‘clinically diagnosed’ via lung imaging, in addition to those who undergo lab tests.
The revision added nearly 15,000 patients to Hubei’s count in a single day, with officials explaining that past cases were included. The first cases emerged in December in Wuhan.
Yesterday, Hubei’s health commission said another 116 people had died and more than 4,800 new cases were reported. Of those cases, more than 3,000 were ‘clinically diagnosed’.
The WHO said the numbers included cases going back weeks.
The sharp one-day increase “does not represent a significant change in the trajectory of the outbreak,” said Michael Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies programme. — AFP