Reuters, Shanghai :
The death toll from a new coronavirus in mainland China jumped to 563 on Thursday, its third consecutive record daily rise, as experts intensified efforts to find a vaccine for a disease that has shut down Chinese cities and forced thousands more into quarantine around the world.
Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, reported 70 new deaths on Wednesday and 2,987 new confirmed cases – more than 80% of the total reported by Chinese authorities. The other fatalities were in Tianjin city, the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and Guizhou province in the southwest.
Hubei province in central China has been in virtual lockdown for nearly two weeks, with its train stations and airports shut and its roads sealed off. The flu-like virus was first identified in Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan and is believed to have originated at a seafood market in the city. There have been two deaths outside mainland China – in the Philippines and Hong Kong – both involving people who had been to Wuhan where more than 400 people have died.
Hundreds of foreigners have been evacuated from Wuhan and placed in quarantine centres around the world, and thousands of passengers and crew were in lockdown on two cruise ships in Asian waters.
Ten more people on a cruise liner in the Japanese port of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, tested positive for the coronavirus, the Japanese health ministry said, bringing the total number of cases on board to 20.
About 3,700 people are facing at least two weeks quarantined on the ship after an 80-year-old Hong Kong man who travelled on it late last month tested positive.
“We are hopeful that the US government will be sending transport for the Americans on board,” Gay Courter, a 75-year-old American novelist aboard the ship, told Reuters.
“It’s better for us to travel while healthy and also if we get sick to be treated in American hospitals.”
In Hong Kong, 3,600 passengers and crew were confined to their ship docked in the city for tests after three people on board had tested positive earlier.
