Coronavirus: China reports 254 deaths in a day as cases surge after including clinically diagnosed patients
- Hubei’s new cases nearly 10 times more than day before, because previously infections were diagnosed only by test kits, of which there has been a shortage
- Heavyweight sent by Beijing to oversee handling of the outbreak says its scale has not been accurately estimated
China’s National Health Commission reported 59,804 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Wednesday – after a surge of 15,152 new cases because of a change in diagnostic criteria.
The commission on Thursday said a total of 1,367 people had died from the illness in mainland China, with 254 new deaths reported on Wednesday.
Live virus found in faecal matter
A team led by senior Chinese medical adviser and Sars expert Zhong Nanshan has detected live coronavirus in a patient’s faeces, mainland media reported.
Zhao Jincun, deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases, said on Thursday that the virus was isolated from a severely infected patient by a hospital laboratory in Zhuhai, southern China.
Zhao said a team led by National Health Commission (NHC) epidemiologist Li Lanjuan made similar findings, suggesting that the coronavirus could be transmitted in different ways. But Zhao said more studies needed to be done to show whether the new coronavirus could be transmitted from person to person through faecal matter.
NHC spokesman Mi Feng said the tests and strains isolated from patients’ faeces showed that the coronavirus could continue to reproduce in the digestive system.