SHANGHAI: China on Friday reported another 5,090 new coronavirus cases and 121 new deaths had been confirmed on the mainland.
The health authority said an accumulated total of 63,851 people have been infected by the coronavirus. As many as 55,748 are currently undergoing treatment, while 1,380 people have died.
Hubei province, which is at the epicenter of the outbreak, earlier reported 4,823 new cases with 116 deaths.
Heilongjiang province in the northeast reported two new deaths, with the other fatalities in the provinces of Anhui and Henan and the municipality of Chongqing.
The number of new deaths and infections was down sharply on the previous day, when a change in the methods of diagnosing patients led to a record spike in cases.
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.
Japan confirmed its first coronavirus death on Thursday – a woman in her 80s living in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo. The death was the third outside mainland China, after two others in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Japan is one of the worst affected of more than two dozen countries and territories outside mainland China that have seen hundreds of infections from the flu-like sickness.
