China reports over 1,280 coronavirus cases, death toll at 41

BEIJING – China’s most festive holiday began in the shadow of a worrying new virus Saturday as the death toll surpassed 40, an unprecedented lockdown kept 36 million people from traveling and authorities canceled a host of Lunar New Year events.

The National Health Commission reported a large increase in the number of people infected with the virus to 1,287 with 41 deaths. The latest tally comes from 29 provinces across China, including 237 patients in serious condition. All 41 deaths have beeb in China, 39 of them taking place in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, one in Hebei and one in Heilongjiang.

Australia just announced their first case Saturday, a Chinese man in his 50s who returned from China. In France, three people have fallen ill with the virus — the disease’s first appearance in Europe. And the U.S. reported its second case, involving a Chicago woman in her 60s who was hospitalized in isolation after returning from China.

Transportation was shut down in Wuhan, the city of 11 million where the outbreak originated, and in at least 12 other cities central Hubei province, with a populations bigger than New York, London, Paris, and Moscow combined.

Hospitals in Wuhan was swarmed with patients and a lack of supplied, Video footage across the internet shows frantic people in masks lined up for examinations, and some complained that family members were being turned away at capacity.

“It’s still too early to draw conclusions about how severe the virus is because at the beginning of any outbreak you would focus more on the severe cases,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva. “And then maybe we are missing some mild cases because people will just be a little bit sick and will not have it tested. And they will recover.”