China coronavirus: Death toll climbs to 2,744 amidst decline in cases

virulence of vel coronavirus continues to show a declining trend in China which reported 29 new fatalities, lowest in weeks, taking death toll to 2,744 while confirmed cases climbed to 78,497, officials said on Thursday.

country's National Health Commission (NHC) said it received reports 433 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 29 deaths on Wednesday from 31 provincial-level regions on mainland.

Among deaths, 26 were from epicentre of virus Hubei province and its capital Wuhan and one each from Beijing, Heilongjiang and Henan, it said.

In Hubei province alone 2,641 people died due to virus since it erupted in December last year including 2,104 fatalities in Wuhan.

province, which is under lockdown, reported 409 new confirmed cases on Wednesday, taking total confirmed cases to 65,596, local health commission said.

Wuhan reported 383 new confirmed cases and 19 new deaths on Wednesday. In total, city has registered 47,824 confirmed cases.

In all 34,978 people were hospitalised in Hubei province of which 6,581 were still in severe condition and 1,403 ors in critical condition.

commission also said Hubei reported 403 suspected cases, taking total to 2,019 cases. Capital Beijing reported 10 cases on Wednesday, taking total number of cases to 400.

All over China, a total of 2,358 people were still suspected of being infected with virus. A total of 32,495 people h been discharged from hospital after recovery including 23,200 in Hubei province.

By end of Wednesday, 91 confirmed cases including two deaths h been reported from Hong Kong, 10 confirmed cases in Macao and 32 in Taiwan including one death.

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Bruce Aylward, an epidemiologist who led an vance team from World Health Organisation (WHO), told media in Geneva on Tuesday that China has changed course of COVID-19 outbreak, ting that rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued and come down faster than previously expected.

Aylward said unanimous assessment of 25-member team which conducted a nine-day field study trip to Beijing, Guangdong, Sichuan and Hubei is that besides opting a science-driven agile response, China followed a pragmatic approach which is "techlogy-powered and science-driven".

"y are using big data, artificial intelligence (AI) in places," Aylward said, ding that China has mand massive amounts of data in finding each COVID-19 cases and tracing contacts.

However, President Xi Jinping, who presided over a high power meeting on Wednesday said while positive trend in preventing and controlling epidemic is expanding and ecomic and social development is rapidly recovering, situation in Hubei and Wuhan remains "complex and grim as risk of a rebound of epidemic in or regions cant be overlooked".

Xi said at this moment it is important to make unremitting epidemic containment efforts and accelerate all aspects of work in ecomic and social development.

He told ruling Communist Party committees and governments at all levels to accurately grasp epidemic as well as ecomic and social development situations to ensure winning people's war against epidemic and achieving goals of building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects and poverty alleviation, Xinhua reported. 

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