SHANGHAI – Over 2,000 people globally have been infected with a new coronavirus, the vast majority of them in China, where 56 people have died from the disease, according to figures released on Sunday.
The virus, believed to have originated late last year in a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, has spread to Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the United States, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Australia, France, and Canada.
On Saturday, Canada declared the first “presumptive” confirmed case of the virus in a resident who had returned from Wuhan. The patient, a male in his 50s, arrived in Toronto on Jan. 22, officials said.
Wuhan is building two new hospitals with a combined 2,300 beds to treat patients, the state media said.
Construction of the second hospital, designed to have 1,300 beds, is scheduled to be completed in half a month while the construction of the first dedicated hospital has started and is due to be finished by Feb. 3.(Reuters)
