Coronavirus outbreak: China reports drop in new cases for third consecutive day

China has reported a drop in new cases of the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, for the third consecutive day after witnessing a spike. According to China’s National Health Commission, 2,009 new cases with 142 more deaths worldwide have been reported because of the deadly Coronavirus, which was declared as a global health emergency by WHO.

The death toll due to Coronavirus has spiked to nearly 1,665 and around 68,000 confirmed cases have been detected till now. While most of the cases are from Hubei province of China and the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, other countries, including Japan and the Philippines, have also now reported deaths related to COVID-19.

Cases with no travel history to China

The latest cause of concern has been the deaths of people with no travel history to China. On February 13, Japan confirmed the death of an 80-year-old woman who was not even the part of the quarantined cruised off the Japanese coast. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has claimed that the sharp rise in the number of cases did not represent any kind of trajectory shift in the epidemic but was because of a change in counting methods.

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Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Michael Ryan, head of WHO's health emergencies programme, said that the increase in the number of cases is due to a change in how cases are being reported. "We have said consistently that we need to be cautious when drawing conclusions from daily reported numbers," said Ryan.

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Meanwhile, the WHO has been frequently releasing situation report on COVID-19 and have found increasing evidence that established a link between the novel coronavirus and other similar known coronaviruses. Referring to the Rhinolophus bat sub-species, the WHO said that they are abundant and widely present in Southern China, and across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

“Recent studies indicate that more than 500 CoVs have been identified in bats in China,” the report read.

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