Beijing (AFP)

The toll of the viral pneumonia epidemic further increased on Sunday in China, exceeding 1,600 dead, but the rate of contamination was declining.

While the new coronavirus killed for the first time outside Asia, a senior Chinese official said his country was in the process of containing the epidemic.

According to the latest report released by Chinese authorities on Sunday, Covid-19 viral pneumonia caused the death of 1,665 people, most of them in Hubei province, where the virus appeared in December. One hundred and forty-two people have died in the past 24 hours.

More than 68,000 people have been infected since the start of the crisis, but the number of new daily cases tends to settle: it reached the figure of 2.009 Sunday, the third day of decline in a row.

"We can already see the effect of measures to control and prevent the epidemic in different parts of the country", welcomed the press spokesman for the national commission (ministry) of Health, Mi Feng .

More cautious, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that it was "far too early" to make forecasts about the course of the disease.

- "Closed management" -

But at the epicenter of the crisis, Hubei province, where 56 million inhabitants have been cut off from the world since January 23, has further restricted the freedom of movement of its citizens far beyond the capital, Wuhan.

Villages and residential cities are now subject to "strict closed management" 24 hours a day, which means that residents are no longer expected to leave their homes until further notice.

Purchases and distribution of food and medicine can be done "centrally," said a provincial directive released Sunday.

In the rest of the world, the epidemic keeps the planet alert, with nearly 600 confirmed cases of contamination in around thirty countries.

French Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn announced Saturday the death the day before the evening of an 80-year-old Chinese tourist hospitalized in France since the end of January. The death is "the first outside Asia, the first in Europe," she said.

Egypt announced on Friday that it had registered the first case on the African continent.

The main source of infection outside of China remains the cruise ship Diamond Princess, under quarantine in Japan: 355 cases of contamination have been confirmed there, including 70 new cases announced on Sunday.

Several countries - Canada, United States, but also Hong Kong, nearly a thousand passengers between them - decided this weekend to quickly evacuate their nationals, stranded in the boat in quarantine since February 3 . But the 3,711 people initially on board have not yet all undergone the examinations making it possible to establish their possible contamination.

- Image and legitimacy -

In China, after removing the top political leaders from Hubei and Wuhan on Friday, the communist regime continued the movement on Sunday with the announcement of sanctions against lower ranking senior officials.

"When a crisis of this magnitude occurs, it takes on political importance, because the international image of China and the legitimacy of the (Communist) Party are at stake," comments the Chinese scholar Zhou Xun Essex (England).

The regime of President Xi Jinping faces an unprecedented wave of dissatisfaction for having delayed reacting to the epidemic. Anger stirred up by the death at the beginning of the month of a young doctor from Wuhan who had been summoned by the police for having alerted in December about the appearance of the virus.

"In general, since Mao, the state has done very little for public health," said Ms. Zhou. "The result is that the health system is very weak, ineffective, expensive and chaotic."

© 2020 AFP