Hong Kong reported its first death from coronavirus, only the second confirmed outside of mainland China.
The patient, who died Tuesday, was a 39-year-old man who had underlying health issues and had traveled to Wuhan, China, where the outbreak started. At least 17 people in Hong Kong have coronavirus. The only other death outside mainland China so far occurred in the Philippines after that patient developed pneumonia.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has declared the coronavirus an emergency and has restricted some border crossings, but health workers began striking Monday to pressure the government to ban all travel from China. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China that borders Guangdong province in the south.
Most of the coronavirus outbreak is in the Hubei province of China, though there have been at least 24 other countries where the virus has been detected in at least one person. Most cases in other countries happened after a patient traveled to Wuhan, but there have been cases where they transmitted the virus to others. At least two such cases occurred in the United States.
As of the latest count, 20,438 people in China have been infected and 427 have died. The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency, and scientists are still trying to understand how infectious and deadly the virus is.
