BEIJING (AP) – China on Thursday raised the death toll to 170 and more countries reported infections from a new virus, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China’s worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
India and the Philippines reported their first cases, a traveler and a student who had both been in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the first illnesses appeared in December. South Korea confirmed a case that was locally spread, a man who had contact with a patient diagnosed the new type of coronavirus earlier.
In Geneva, the World Health Organization convened its coronavirus expert committee to assess whether the outbreak warrants being declared a global emergency. The committee last week had advised the U.N. health agency it was too early to make that pronouncement.
Locally spread cases outside China are a worrying concern as potential signs of the virus spreading more easily and the difficulty of containing it.
The new virus has now infected more people in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, another type of coronavirus.