EU Raises Alert As Virus Toll Crosses 3,000

Nine times more new COVID-19 cases outside China than inside: WHO; Italy toll rises to 52

The death toll from COVID-19 outbreak surpassed 3,000 on Monday as more people died in China, Iran and the U.S. and Europe raised its state of alert.

The new coronavirus, also called SARS-CoV-2, has now infected more than 89,000, spread to over 60 countries and threatens to cause a global economic slowdown — after first emerging in China late last year.

With fears of a pandemic on the rise, the World Health Organization urged all countries to stock up on critical care ventilators to treat patients with severe symptoms.

China reported 42 more deaths on Monday — all in central Hubei province. The death toll in China alone rose to 2,912, but it is also surging abroad.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that the number of new coronavirus cases registered in the past day in China was far lower than in the rest of the world.

“In the last 24 hours there were almost nine times more COVID-19 cases reported outside China than inside China,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.