More than 100,000 people have now contracted the new coronavirus since it first appeared in central China. Covid-19 is present in 92 countries and has claimed nearly 3,500 lives, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

China announced Saturday (March 7th) 28 new deaths, bringing the total death toll to 3,070 in the country, and a further increase in the number of cases outside of Hubei province, where the virus was first detected.

WHO has estimated the spread of the virus to be "of great concern". It urges states to make the fight against the spread of the disease their first priority. Here or there, first cases are recorded as in Bhutan or Peru but the states most affected remain China, South Korea, Iran, Italy and France.

In the United States, the virus was detected on 21 people aboard the Grand Princess, a cruise ship maintained off the coast of California, after the discovery of symptoms in some of its 3,533 passengers and crew members, according to the US vice president Mike Pence.

After hosting its large annual conference in Washington, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC announced Friday that two of the participants had tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Reduced contamination in Hubei province

The inevitable spread has been partly contained in China's Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic, thanks to the quarantine of some 56 million people since the end of January.

New contaminations of people have been going down for several weeks. With 74 new cases, it is the lowest number since the quarantine measures put in place in late January in the province, according to Chinese authorities. However, 24 cases of imported coronavirus have been identified in Hubei, raising fears of a further increase in contamination in China.

The region may soon be reopened, the government said on Friday, as the Communist regime is the subject of an unusual challenge, the confined residents lacking in food.

For their part, 13 countries have closed their schools: 300 million students worldwide are out of school for several weeks. Besides China, the most affected countries are South Korea, Iran, Italy and France.

Friday, Togo, the Palestinian Territories, Serbia, the Vatican, Slovakia, Peru or Bhutan announced the first cases. In Egypt, 12 cases have been detected among the personnel of a cruise ship on the Nile. In Greece, it is a group of at least 34 infected characters who have traveled in the same bus for a pilgrimage to Israel that concentrates all the attention.

With AFP

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