The new strain of coronavirus identified in China is spreading rapidly in one of the most densely populated parts of the world.

The virus shows signs it is moving around the world in a similar way to SARS in 2002-03.

The first case was traced back to 10 December but it was not until 10 January when the Chinese authorities admitted they had isolated and identified the new strain, when 41 people were confirmed as being infected and one person had already died.

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Within a few days, cases were identified in Japan and Thailand, in each case from Chinese people who had come from Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, where the disease broke out.

By 23 January, 13 days after the disease - dubbed Wuhan Virus - was publicly identified, more than 600 people were confirmed as infected around the world in nine countries and 18 had died.

Worryingly for the Chinese authorities, by that day, the first case of a death outside of Hubei - where the disease started - had been reported in Beijing.

The number of cases and deaths kept climbing by the day, with 132 deaths and 5,974 cases confirmed on 29 January - a jump of 1,459 cases from the day before.

On that day, the new virus had infected more people than SARS, which infected 5,327 people but killed nearly 800 around the world between November 2002 and July 2003.

By 30 January the death toll had risen to 170, with 7,711 cases reported just in China.

On 10 February, 49,171 people had been diagnosed in China, while more than 360 cases had been confirmed outside mainland China.

By that date, 910 people had died from coronavirus, with all but two in China, meaning the total exceeded the 774 people killed by the 2002/3 SARS outbreak.

On 11 February, the China death toll went over 1,000, with 1,016 cases, and the daily deaths topped 100 for the first time, with 109 people dying.

No more people had died outside China, but the virus had spread to 27 countries, with 462 confirmed on that day.

China has been praised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for being transparent about the spread of the new coronavirus.

WHO first began publishing data on SARS on 17 March 2003, by which point there were 167 cases in six countries, excluding mainland China.

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At the time, the Chinese authorities refused to go public with information about the extent of SARS - another coronavirus - parking patients in hotels and driving them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts.

In the latest outbreak of the new coronavirus, China has appeared to learn its lesson by sharing information rapidly, something President Xi Jinping has emphasised is a priority.

That was in contrast with the SARS outbreak, where 13 days after the WHO began publishing statistics 1,622 people had been confirmed as infected, 67 people had died and 14 countries were involved.

The Chinese are attempting to limit the spread by taking urgent action, locking down Wuhan and more than a dozen other cities across Hubei province, restricting movement of an unprecedented 56 million people.