Coronavirus deaths exceed toll from SARS

As many people across China return to work today after an already-extended Lunar New Year break, the country is confronting two bleak statistics:

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 900 people in the country — more than the 774 people who died worldwide from the SARS epidemic 17 years ago.

The number of new deaths that the government reported on Sunday — 97 — was the highest so far in a single day.

Here are the latest updates and a map of where the virus has spread. The World Health Organization’s director general said on Sunday that an advance team was on its way to China to help the government contain the outbreak.

Analysis: Officially, the virus has sickened 40,171 people in China. But experts say that deaths and infections are probably being undercounted because testing facilities are under severe strain.

Inside the outbreak: In Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, our reporter met a family in which three generations have been sickened by the virus.

In Beijing: The outbreak is testing an authoritarian system that President Xi Jinping has built around himself over the past seven years. A writer in the Chinese capital described the outbreak as “a big shock” to the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy — second only to the government’s armed crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.