The news comes as state television reported that Liu Zhiming, director of Wuhan Wuchang Hospital, died Tuesday morning, becoming one of the latest fatalities of the epidemic.
The government also reported an additional 9,886 new infections across the country, but mostly from Hubei, bringing the nationwide total to at least 252,436.
Tuesday, February 18
UK working to organize flight for British nationals on cruise ship
Britain's Foreign Office said on Tuesday it is working to organize a flight to Japan to evacuate its nationals from a cruise ship hit by the coronavirus, which has more than 400 people infected out of some 3,700 on board.
"Our staff are contacting British nationals on board to make the necessary arrangements", the Foreign Office said in a statement, adding it hoped the flight can be arranged as soon as possible.
'Don't be kidnapped by China': Taiwan tells WHO
Taiwan urged the World Health Organization on Tuesday not to be "kidnapped" by China, as more countries put travel curbs on its citizens because the health agency groups the island's coronavirus cases with China, despite only 22 reported infections.
The self-ruled island shares the agency's classification of China as "very high risk", since the WHO considers Taiwan as part of China. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou told reporters: "Taiwan is not ruled by China and certainly should not be labelled as an infected area".
Shanghai says students won't return to school
The Shanghai government has said that students will not return to schools now and the semester will start via online learning amid China's coronavirus outbreak.
Online education for primary and secondary school students in Shanghai will begin on March 2, said Lu Jing, head of the Shanghai Education Committee, at a briefing on Tuesday. Shanghai had previously said schools would not reopen before the end of February.
Coronavirus infections slow in China first time since January
The number of new coronavirus infections in mainland China fell below 2,000 for the first time since January.
The number of new daily infections in mainland China had not been below 2,000 since January 30, while the daily death toll had not come under 100 since February 11. Chinese authorities say the stabilisation in the number of new cases is a sign that tough measures they have taken to halt the spread of the disease are having an effect.
"We can hope that the reports of falling numbers of new cases in China does show that the epidemic has peaked in Hubei province, but it is still too early to be sure that this is so," said Jimmy Whitworth, professor of International Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
China arrests activist who criticised Xi over virus: rights group
Police in China arrested a prominent activist who had been a fugitive for weeks and criticised President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus epidemic while in hiding, a rights group said.
Anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong was arrested on Saturday after being on the run since December, according to Amnesty International.
The death this month of a whistleblowing doctor who was reprimanded by police for raising the alarm about the deadly new virus before dying of it himself triggered rare calls for political reform and freedom of speech.
The "Chinese government's battle against the coronavirus has in no way diverted it from its ongoing general campaign to crush all dissenting voices", said Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, in an emailed statement.
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