China virus death toll near 2K

Nearly 73K coronavirus cases reported on nation’s mainland

Mainland China reported 1,886 new virus cases and 98 more deaths for a total of 1,868 in its update Tuesday, following a report that 80 percent of cases have been mild, prompting guarded optimism from health officials.

The latest figures come after health officials in China published the first details on nearly 45,000 cases of infection with the coronavirus that originated there, saying more than 80 percent have been mild and that new ones seem to be falling since early this month.

A total of 72,436 cases have been reported in mainland China as of Tuesday, although a spike in recent cases was due to a broader definition in the hardest-hit region based on doctors’ diagnoses before laboratory tests were completed.

Monday’s report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention gives the World Health Organization 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.

China may postpone its annual congress in March, its biggest political meeting of the year, to avoid travel while the disease is still spreading. The standing committee for the National People’s Congress will meet Feb. 24 to deliberate on a postponement of the meeting due to start March 5.

The new disease, called COVID-19, emerged in December in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province, and has spread to more than two dozen other countries.

The new study reports on 44,672 cases confirmed in China as of Feb. 11. The virus caused severe symptoms such as pneumonia in 14 percent of them and critical illness in 5 percent.

The fatality rate for these confirmed cases is 2.3 percent —

2.8 percent for males versus 1.7 percent for females.

That’s lower than for SARS and MERS, which are caused by two similar viruses, but COVID-19 ultimately could prove more deadly if it spreads to far more people than the others did. Ordinary flu has a fatality rate of 0.1 percent yet kills hundreds of thousands because it infects millions each year.