More than 40 thousand infected ... Corona virus kills 908 people

The death toll from the new Corona virus in China rose to 908 after 97 people died Sunday, while the number of infected people reached more than 40,000.

Health authorities in Hubei Province, where the outbreak of the virus is located in the center of the country, said that during the past 24 hours, it had killed 91 people and infected 2,618 additional people.

The National Health Commission of China announced - in a statement - that 3062 new confirmed cases were infected with the virus, which brings the number of infected cases throughout China to 40,171 cases.

Among the cases, 6,484 people were in critical condition, while more than 2,700 cases were recovering from the disease, according to the statement.

Outside mainland China, there were only two deaths from the virus, one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

The death toll from the Corona virus is much greater than that of the SARS epidemic.

An international team
On the other hand, the World Health Organization said on Sunday that a team of international experts led by the organization had gone to Beijing to assist in the investigations related to the outbreak of the Corona virus.

The organization's director general Tedros Adhanom - who visited Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese ministers in late January - had returned after agreeing to send an international mission there.

But it took about two weeks for the government to approve the unspecified squad, except for the name of its boss, who is veteran physician at the World Health Organization, Bruce Elward, a Canadian epidemiologist.

"I was just at the airport to bid farewell to members of an advance team for the WHO-led international experts mission to China, headed by Dr. Bruce Illward, who has extensive experience in previous public health emergencies," Adhanom wrote in a Twitter Tweet from Geneva.

China is struggling to control the new Corona epidemic, and has taken strict measures to close down entire cities and prevent their residents from leaving their homes unless necessary.

It is believed that the virus first appeared in late December in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, in a wild animal market, and it spread rapidly with a massive population movement for the Lunar New Year holiday in January.

The pandemic prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency and many governments to impose travel and airline restrictions to suspend flights to and from China.