China reported its biggest single-day jump in novel coronavirus deaths on Thursday, as global fears deepened with more infections confirmed overseas including three Japanese evacuated from the outbreak’s epicentre. The World Health Organization, which initially downplayed the severity of a disease that has now killed 170 in China, planned a meeting Thursday on whether to declare the epidemic a global emergency. Regardless of any WHO declaration, governments, companies and people around the world continued to ramp up efforts to try and contain the mysterious illness that is believed to have emerged from an animal market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
