China's Hubei province reports 116 new coronavirus deaths

BEIJING (Reuters) - The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China’s Hubei province has risen by 116, with the total number of cases up by nearly 5,000, the province’s health commission said on Friday. The commission did not disclose the total number of deaths from the newly identified virus, which stood at 1,310 on Thursday. Of the new deaths, 88 occurred in the provincial capital of Wuhan, where the flu-like virus is believed to have originated late last year. A further 4,823 cases had been detected in Hubei, taking the total in the province to 51,986. Over four fifths of the province’s new cases were in Wuhan. The new figures give no indication the outbreak is nearing a peak, said Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. “Based on the current trend in confirmed cases, this appears to be a clear indication that while the Chinese authorities are doing their best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the fairly drastic measures they have implemented to date would appear to have been too little, too late,” he said. The daily toll rose by a record of more than 240 on Thursday after the commission began counting cases diagnosed through new clinical methods.