Coronavirus: China says 'victory is near' as number of infections fall

China's ambassador to the United Nations has declared that "victory" against coronavirus within the country is in sight as the number of new cases hit a six-week low.

Just 125 infections were confirmed on Tuesday in China, down from a peak of more than 15,000 cases a day at the start of February.

Ambassador Zhang Jun said that the decline demonstrated that "we are not far from the coming of the victory".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the "decline is real" - at the early stages of the outbreak there were concerns that figures provided by Chinese authorities were inconsistent.

"We have seen a decline in cases since the end of January... we scrutinised this data and we believe this decline is real," Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO outbreak expert and a member of the investigative team who travelled to China last month, said yesterday.

Nurses assemble plastic face shields at a hospital designated for the coronavirus patients in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. Photo / AP

The drop was as a result of the "comprehensive measures" China took to stem the spread of coronavirus, including unprecedented quarantines and rigorous contact tracing, she added.

"We have no reason to believe this is not possible in other countries with an aggressive approach... including in Italy, in Iran, in South Korea," Van Kerkhove added.

While China's outbreak - which has already infected 80,150 people and killed 2800 - appears to be waning, coronavirus infections are rapidly escalating elsewhere.

Some 1900 cases were confirmed outside the country yesterday, with Argentina, Ukraine and Gibraltar among the nations to detect the virus for the first time.

More than 70 countries worldwide - in every continent bar Antarctica - have now diagnosed infections.

But the worst hit country has been South Korea, where the president declared war on the disease as infection numbers spiked by nearly 1000 in just 48 hours.

Almost 5200 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19, resulting in 31 fatalities.

Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, ordered additional hospital beds and more face masks to be made available as reports emerged of medical staff collapsing from exhaustion.

"The entire country has entered war against the infectious disease as the crisis in Daegu and Gyeongbuk province has reached the highest point," he told a Cabinet meeting, referring to the two hardest-hit parts of the country.

"I am very sorry to the people that we are not able to supply masks swiftly and sufficiently, and have caused inconvenience," the president said.

The majority of confirmed cases have been linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive movement that reveres its messiah-like founder, Lee Man-hee, 88, and boasts hundreds of thousands of followers.

People have their temperature checked and their hands disinfected as they enter the Palladium Shopping Center, in northern Tehran, Iran. Photo / AP

The government of Seoul has asked for a murder investigation into the church, alleging that it was liable for its refusal to co-operate with efforts to stop the disease.

Park Won-soon, the mayor of the capital Seoul, claimed that if Lee and other leaders of the church had co-operated with the authorities, effective preventive measures could have saved those who later died of the virus.

At a news conference on Monday, Lee bowed and apologised on his knees for the outbreak.

"Although it was not intentional, many people have been infected," he said. "We put our utmost efforts, but were unable to prevent it all."

"Nearby Japan has also been badly affected by the outbreak, with its own infection rate boosted by the docking of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, where more than 700 passengers were diagnosed with coronavirus during a two-week quarantine. Six passengers have died.

Seiko Hashimoto, the minister for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, said the games "could be postponed until later this year".

The minister told a parliamentary meeting that the contract signed by the International Olympic Committee with the city stated that it had the right to cancel the games - which are due to open on July 24 - only if they could not be held in 2020.