China announced its first death from the corona virus on January 11 and just a month later, 1,016 mainland Chinese died from the disease.

The National Health Commission of China today announced that it had recorded an additional 108 deaths from acute pneumonia, bringing the total death toll to 1,016 in mainland China and 1,018 globally, including one person. Wuhan men in the Philippines and a 39-year-old man in Hong Kong. It is the first time that the death toll has reached three digits since the outbreak of a new strain of the corona virus (nCoV) virus in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, central China.

China announced the first death due to nCoV on January 11. The number of deaths has increased by a factor of a thousand in one month, although the mortality rate remains relatively low, at 2.4%.

Chinese authorities have frozen millions of people in several cities, while some governments ban citizens from China. Dozens of major airlines also stopped flights to and from China to keep the disease away from their territories.

However, the case of a British man who has never been to China transmitting the virus to at least 11 others has raised concerns about a new stage of infection abroad.

The majority of cases abroad have been related to people who used to be in Wuhan or who were infected from people who were in Wuhan. The British man, whose identity has not been disclosed, became infected during a conference in Singapore, then spread it to a number of people while on holiday in the French Alps. Returning to England, he was diagnosed with nCoV infection.

Of the men who were infected with the virus, 5 were hospitalized in France, 5 in the UK and another in the Spanish island of Mallorca.

"The discovery of a small number of these infections could be a spark sparking a bigger fire," said World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus yesterday. "But it's still just a spark now. Our goal is still to stop it. We call on all countries to take the opportunity we have to prevent a bigger fire."

But Michael Ryan, head of the WHO's Emergency Medical Program, said it was "too early" to call the conference in Singapore a "viral super viral event".

"There is always concern when people focus and then disperse. We have to have a risk management process related to that, but you also can't close the world," Ryan said.

The British government calls nCoV a "serious and immediate threat", saying that anyone with the disease can now be placed on quarantine if they are considered a threat to public health. The statement came after authorities confirmed the number of nCoV infections in the UK doubled.

Officials in Japan also recorded 135 cases of nCoV infection on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which is currently isolated off the coast. The cruise ship, operated by Carnival Japan Inc., with 3,711 passengers and crew, was quarantined at the Port of Yokohama on February 4, after an 80-year-old passenger from Hong Kong who took the ship last month positive for nCoV.

The WHO international team came to China yesterday. The team was led by Bruce Aylward, who oversees the WHO response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014-2016. Ryan said the group would lay the foundation for a larger international mission, seeking to understand "the issue surrounding the origin of the virus as well as the severity of the disease".

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has fired the party secretary and director of the Hubei Province health committee, where 56 million people were blockaded since the end of last month to prevent the virus from spreading. Authorities in Wuhan and Hubei faced a series of criticism for hiding the outbreak in early January. The majority of deaths and infections are in Hubei.

The death of doctor Li Wenliang, one of eight people who tried to warn nCoV but was accused of spreading rumors and reprimand by authorities, further fueled calls for political reform in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who described the anti-virus war as "the war of the people", has largely not appeared in public since the outbreak of the disease and spread across the country. However, Xi yesterday visited a hospital in Beijing, wearing a mask and measuring his body temperature.

While talking to health workers and patients, Xi called the situation in Hubei "still very serious" and called for "drastic measures" to prevent the virus from spreading.