Coronavirus cases top 60,000 as death toll sharply rises

Follow Thursday's updates on the coronavirus outbreak here.The fight against the novel coronavirus took a turn for the worse on Wednesday night, as Chinese health officials in the Hubei province reported 242 new deaths and 14,840 new cases of the flu-like virus. Patrick Murphy said he sent an embassy team to work with the ship's representatives and Cambodian officials to help Americans disembark and transfer to their onward destinations.—The Associated PressThe CDC on Wednesday confirmed that another person who had been evacuated from Wuhan, China, has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the country to 14. More than 600 evacuees on chartered flights from Wuhan remain under federal quarantine, according to the CDC.China's Hubei province reported a massive uptick in deaths and confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday. "China took action … shut down Wuhan city, and that helped stop the spread to other cities," he said.Ghebreyesus urged people not to stigmatize a country, calling the virus our "common enemy." The CDC on Wednesday confirmed that the agency has not been given direct access to China's data on the novel coronavirus.China has been criticized for a lack of transparency during the outbreak. there's no question about it," he said.Mounir was speaking to reporters at the Singapore Air Show, Asia's biggest aviation expo, which had over 70 exhibitors withdraw due to virus fears.- CBS/APThe chief scientist for the World Health Organization sounded cautiously optimistic Wednesday as she joined colleagues for a second day of meetings in Geneva aimed at answering questions about the deadly new coronavirus outbreak. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan pointed to two consecutive days of declining infection rates in China, where the vast majority of all cases have been reported, and told BBC News "it does look like at least it's not growing, it's reducing.""The number of cases outside China has not grown exponentially," she said, calling it "very manageable." "So we do believe that there is still an opportunity to control and contain this disease, and it need not necessarily become a pandemic."Earlier Wednesday, Swaminathan warned that current coronavirus patients outside of China, "might have already seeded other micro-clusters" of the disease, "this may become still a global outbreak or even a pandemic." In Hong Kong, the evacuation of hundreds of people from an apartment building after cases of the new coronavirus were discovered in residents living 10 floors apart has raised suspicions the virus may have spread through the building's plumbing.Three residents in one apartment were confirmed earlier this week to have the virus, days after a resident who lives 10 floors above them was diagnosed. During the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, an illness caused by a closely related virus, a number of infections in Hong Kong were linked to one building's sewage pipes.Hong Kong has confirmed 49 cases in the current outbreak, and one of the only two deaths outside of mainland China.- CBS/AP  The British businessman who contracted the new coronavirus on a visit to Singapore, and then inadvertently spread it to 11 people at a ski resort in France before returning home to England, has recovered from the disease and gone home, British officials said Wednesday.After two negative tests, Steve Walsh was declared virus-free and allowed to go back to his home near the southern coastal city of Hove. In a statement, he said it was "good to be back with my family," and that his thoughts were with the other people diagnosed with the disease, now officially called COVID-19.Two local doctors' offices were shuttered in the city of Brighton on Tuesday after at least one doctor, who was at the French ski resort with Walsh, was confirmed to have the virus.Five of the cases linked to Walsh were in England, five in France and one in Spain, according to BBC News.The palm-fringed hotel in the Japanese city of Katsuura is usually a destination for sun-worshipping holidaymakers, but for the last two weeks it has also been a coronavirus quarantine site. While hospitalized, she found out she was pregnant and said she didn't feel safe among other quarantined people who had been in China.Russia has had only two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, both of whom recovered and were sent home this week.- Alexandra OdynovaThe bank DBS on Wednesday cleared a downtown office in Singapore and told some 300 employees to work from home after one of its staff was infected with the new coronavirus. - AP/CBSThe chief scientist for the World Health Organization said Wednesday that there could be undetected cases of the new coronavirus lurking around the world, which could spread the virus in their home communities and create new "micro-clusters" of the disease.