First American coronavirus death confirmed

On Saturday, February 8, the United States Embassy in Beijing confirmed that a 60-year-old American national died of the new coronavirus last Thursday at Jinyintian Hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson says this is the first known American death from Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

The Chinese government today offered condolences for the death of "a Chinese-American."

Also on Saturday, a Japanese national suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus died in Wuhan.

The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak rose to 700 in mainland China, with the death of a 60-year-old American man marking the first confirmed non-Chinese death from the illness https://t.co/nSF3SoNSAH pic.twitter.com/9n9P5Pss5V

- Reuters (@Reuters) February 8, 2020

More recent Boing Boing posts about the outbreak, which has claimed more than 700 lives, mostly in China:

" Coronavirus exposes China's surveillance state

" China blocks Apple supplier Foxconn from restarting factories as outbreak spreads
PHOTO: From China's Communist government's propaganda outlet, China Daily."Zhang Jixian, a respiratory physician from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese & Western Medicine, wears protective gear before treating novel coronavirus patients at isolation wards, in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Jan 30, 2020." [Photo by Yuan Zheng/China Daily]

" China mourns Li Wenliang, the Wuhan whistleblower doctor who warned of coronavirus outbreak