Virus cases fall in China but fears rise in South Korea

SEOUL: South Korea on Saturday reported 346 coronavirus cases — a six-fold jump in four days — with most linked to a church and a hospital in and around its fourth-largest city.

Schools were closed in Daegu, with churchgoers and others told to avoid mass gatherings in a bid to contain the disease. Initial infections were linked to China, but new cases in South Korea and Iran — where there have been four deaths — do not show a clear connection to travel there. In an emerging cluster of illnesses in northern Italy, the first to fall ill met with someone who had returned from China on January 21 without experiencing any symptoms of the new virus, health authorities said.

China said on Saturday its daily count of new virus cases there fell significantly to 397, with another 109 people dying of the disease, most in its epicentre of Hubei province.

The new figures bring the total number of cases in mainland China to 76,288 with 2,345 deaths, as strict quarantine measures and travel bans continue to contain the disease that emerged in China in December and has since spread world-wide.

The daily infection figure was down from 889 on Friday.

Of the 142 new cases in South Korea, 131 are from Daegu and nearby regions, which have emerged as the latest front in the widening global fight against Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned clusters not directly linked to travel, such as those in South Korea and Iran, suggested time might be running out to contain the outbreak.