The first detailed study into the coronavirus outbreak in China has found that the sick, elderly people and medical staff are most at risk from the deadly disease, and that more than 80 percent of the cases have been mild.
The mortality rate remains low but it is more in the case of patients above the age of 80.
No deaths have been reported among children of up to 9 years of age, and the death rate remains low at 0.2 percent in people up to the age of 39, the report by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) said.
80.9 percent of infections are classified as mild, and 13.8 percent as severe, while only 4.7 percent of the cases are critical.
CCDC points out that medical staff who are dealing with the patients are also highly vulnerable to infection.
The director of the Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, died from the virus on Tuesday. He is the sixth health official in China to die after getting infected with coronavirus.
According to the study, a total of 1,716 health workers have tested positive with the virus so far.
By the end of Monday, a total of 1,868 people died of the disease and 72,436 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection were reported in China, mostly from Hubei, the National Health Commission said in its daily report Tuesday.
The commission said it received reports of 1,886 new confirmed cases on Monday, and 1701 patients discharged from hospital after recovery.
According to the NHC, the daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases outside Hubei has dropped for 14 consecutive days since February 3.
Meanwhile, Chinese experts have confirmed on the basis of clinical trial results that an anti-malarial drug has been found effective in the treatment of COVID-19.
The experts have unanimously suggested that Chloroquine Phosphate be included in the next version of the treatment guidelines and applied in wider clinical trials as soon as possible, Xin Hua quoted Sun Yanrong, deputy head of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development, as saying at a press conference Monday.
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