Coronavirus death toll in China reaches 811, India reports no new cases

With 89 new casualties on Saturday, the death toll in China due to the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak has reached  811, the National Health Commission announced on Sunday.

The number has now officially exceeded the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that broke out in 2002-03. The virus had killed 774 people globally.

The tally of confirmed cases jumped to over 37,000, including the 2,656 new cases that were reported on Sunday, the commission said in its daily report.

A total of 811 people have died of the disease so far and 37,198 confirmed cases have been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, according to the commission.

Among the 89 deaths, 81 were from Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, two in Henan, and one each in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, it said.

On Saturday, 600 people recovered and walked out of the hospitals. This included 324 in Hubei province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

In India, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has cancelled valid visas issued earlier to foreign nationals travelling from China in India. ".The screening of passengers is now on in all 21 airports, International Seaports and border crossings. As of now 1636 flights and 176703 passengers were screened so far at 21 Airports," it said in a press statement.

The ministry further informed that out of the 1449 samples that were tested, 1446 samples were found negative except for the three from Kerala which had tested positive.