The death toll from China’s new coronavirus epidemic has risen to 2236 with 118 more deaths reported, mostly from the hard-hit Hubei province.
The total number of confirmed cases of people infected with the virus have climbed to 75465. Chinese health officials said on Friday.
“One new country (Islamic Republic of Iran) reported cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.” WHO said in a statement.
“China has revised their guidance on case classification for COVID-19, removing the classification of “clinically diagnosed” previously used for Hubei province, and retaining only “suspected” and “confirmed” for all areas, the latter requiring laboratory confirmation. Some previously reported “clinically diagnosed” cases are thus expected to be discarded over the coming days as laboratory testing is conducted and some are found to be COVID-19-negative,” the statement said.
Outside China, the number of deaths has climbed to 11, sources said.
The virus, first emerged in December in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province, and has spread to more than two dozen other countries.
Many countries have confirmed cases and several nations have evacuated their citizens from Hubei.
