BEIJING: The world has entered uncharted territory in its battle against the deadly coronavirus, the UN health agency warned, as new infections dropped dramatically in China on Tuesday but surged abroad with the US death toll rising to nine.

Globally, the virus has killed more than 3,100 people and infected over 90,000 even as a clear shift in the crisis emerges, with nine times as many new cases recorded outside China as inside, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

China has imposed draconian quarantines and travel restrictions to keep large swathes of the population indoors — a strategy that appears to have paid off as new cases have been generally falling for days.

While Italy has locked down towns, other countries have stopped short of imposing mass quarantines and instead have discouraged large gatherings, delayed sporting events and banned arrivals from virus-hit nations. Twitter told staff across the world to work from home.

South Korea, Iran and Italy have emerged as major COVID-19 hotspots, which emerged from a market that sold wild animals in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

US death toll rises to nine

South Korea, the biggest cluster outside China, reported 851 new cases, its biggest daily increase, sending its total past 5,000 while its death toll rose to 28.

“The entire country has entered a war with the infectious disease,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said.

Coronavirus has claimed 77 lives in Iran, officials said, as the emergency services chief became the latest high-ranking official to be infected in the country.

It announced another 11 deaths and 835 new infections on Tuesday — the biggest increase in a single day since the COVID-19 outbreak began in the Islamic republic nearly two weeks ago.

“According to the latest figures, 835 new patients have been added” to the overall number of infections, Iran’s stand-in deputy health minister Alireza Raisi said.

“Unfortunately, we have 11 new deaths, and with this amount we have reached 2,336 new confirmed cases and a total of 77 dead,” he said in remarks aired live on state television.

By contrast, China reported 125 new cases on Tuesday — its lowest daily increase in six weeks — with all but 11 infections in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital.

The nationwide death toll rose to 2,943 with 31 more deaths, with some 80,000 total cases.

China has even confirmed 13 imported infections, including eight Chinese nationals who worked at the same restaurant in northern Italy’s Lombardy region.

Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province are imposing 14-day quarantines on people arriving from countries with a severe epidemic.

“We are in uncharted territory,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. “We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures.”

Community transmission means infections within a population are not imported from another virus-hit area.

The US is now facing a potential epidemic, with six people dying in the northwestern state of Washington, where officials warned residents the battle against the disease was shifting from containment to mitigation.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2020