A second person has died in China from the pneumonia-like outbreak that has infected 51 people in the central city of Wuhan, where it first originated.
As reported by the Associated Press, the 69-year-old man, surnamed Xiong, fell ill on Dec 31 and passed away on 15 January. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission informed that he exhibited abnormal renal function, impairment in multiple organs, inflammation of the heart muscle and other serious conditions when he was admitted. “It was not clear from the commission's statement whether these were preexisting issues or consequences of the viral pneumonia”, the AP report stated.
This follows the first case of death reported from China of a 61-year-old man on January 9, who was a regular customer at the market in Wuhan.
The virus has been identified as a form of coronavirus which has infected 41 people in the city. It has put the rest of Asia on high alert, especially because it belongs to the same family of viruses as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, which first gripped China and parts of the world in 2002 and was declared a pandemic.
SARS was declared a pandemic when it first emerged in the region and spread to 37 countries across the world before it was brought under control. It infected over 8000 people and killed 774, according to the World Health Organisation.
The first case of this pneumonia-like illness was confirmed in Japan on 16 January, Thursday.
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