The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has passed 1,100 after China attributed more than 90 new deaths to the disease. The latest deaths were reported as top scientists gathered in Geneva to try and answer a raft of questions about the new disease with the head of the World Health Organization issuing a plea for global unity against “a common enemy that does not respect borders or ideologies.”
In the U.S., a federal quarantine ended Tuesday for nearly 200 Americans who have been at a Southern California military base for the past two weeks, health officials announced. The group of 195 people was evacuated from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China on a U.S.-chartered flight in January, and no one in the group was found to have the virus, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, the public health officer for Riverside County, told reporters.
Authorities said there were 44,346 confirmed cases of the disease in China alone, with 395 more in 24 different countries. That includes a new case confirmed Monday in San Diego, the 13th person diagnosed in the U.S. Like most cases, that patient was recently in the Chinese city of Wuhan. All but one of the fatalities from the virus have been in China.
“With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned Tuesday, urging health officials and governments to “use the window of opportunity that we have now.”
The WHO has grown increasingly concerned about the virus being transmitted from people with no recent history of travel to China to others in their home countries. Tedros said Monday that this “community spread,” which has been seen now in the U.K. and Spain, at least, could be the “spark” that lights a bigger fire.
