Foreign governments retreated their citizens out of the epicentre of China’s coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday, as the number of deaths surged to 133 and the World Health Organization voiced “grave concern” about person-to-person spread in three other countries.
“In the last few days the progress of the virus especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva, naming Germany, Vietnam and Japan.
“Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”
There have been 6,065 cases of the flu-like virus in 15 countries worldwide – all but around 70 in China – according to the latest WHO figures. All the deaths so far have been in China, where the National Health Commission said there had been 132 fatalities as of end-Tuesday. Another death was reported in Sichuan province on Wednesday.
The WHO said its Emergency Committee would reconvene behind closed doors on Thursday to decide whether the rapid spread of the new virus from China now constitutes a global emergency.
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