Information about the new coronavirus epidemic

26 February 2020

This brochure is based on the data of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on 26 February 2020 and the data of the World Health Organization (WHO) on 25 February 2020. An epidemic of pneumonia with unknown origin was reported from Wuhan, China, to the WHO in December 2019. A new coronavirus has been confirmed by Chinese health authorities as cause of the diseases, which can spread from person to person. The WHO declared an international epidemic emergency due to the new coronavirus epidemic on 30 January 2020. According to the information of the ECDC, the case definition for confirmed diseases changed in Hubei Province on 12 February 2020, according to the Hubei Health Committee decision. According to the new case definition all clinically diagnosed patients must be regarded as confirmed COVID-19 without laboratory confirmation. Clinically diagnosed is a suspect case[1] who has an imaging examination for pneumonia. According to the information from the Hubei Provincial Health Committee the conditions have been changed to ensure that individuals who meet the criteria for a clinically diagnosed patient receive timely treatment and improve healing rates. Due to the revision of the case definition, the disease data reported on 13 February 2020 cannot be compared with the data of the previous period. The case classification changed again in Hubei Province on 20 February 2020, a confirmed case is a laboratory confirmed case again.

According to ECDC’s daily report data of 26 February 2020, 893 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported globally on 26 February bringing the total number to 81 027 and 65 deaths have been reported bringing the total number of deaths to 2 763. 78 095 cases (of which 346 new cases) were reported in China (besides the cases reported in Macao and Hong Kong), of which 2 716 patients (53 new cases) died. Since 31 December 2019 and as of 26 February 2020, 65 187 cases have been reported in Hubei Province. In areas outside China (including Hong Kong and Macao), a total of 2 837 confirmed cases were reported from 40 countries / territories (including cases reported in Japan from international cruise). In Italy, the number of deaths has risen to eleven. Fifteen deaths occurred in Iran, 11 in South Korea, 4 on international cruise (Japan), and 2 in Hong Kong (SAR). Deaths were reported from the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and France. A total of 383 confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported from Europe (France, Germany, Finland, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Great Britain and Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Austria).