Doctors in China adopted a new way of diagnosing the novel coronavirus, leading to a huge jump in the official number of deaths blamed on the disease and the number of confirmed cases in the country. Officials in Hubei province, the Chinese region where the virus is believed to have jumped into the human population from wild animals, reported 254 new deaths and 15,152 new cases of the flu-like virus.

The increase brought the worldwide death toll to at least 1,370, including Japan’s first fatal case. The number of confirmed cases around the world was over 60,000.

Only about 400 of those patients, and just three of the confirmed fatalities, have been outside mainland China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Thursday a 15th case of the disease – now called COVID-19 – in the United States FULL STORY HERE