Coronavirus Global Death Toll Surpasses SARS Outbreak as 910 Have Died

At least 910 people have died after contracting the Wuhan coronavirus, surpassing the number of those killed during the 2002/2003 SARS epidemic.

As of Sunday afternoon, the coronavirus-known as 2019-nCoV-has infected 40,510 patients globally, according to Johns Hopkins University’s virus tracker.

A 60-year-old U.S. citizen in China is the first American to die from the coronavirus outbreak, which has now killed 814 people, mostly in China. A U.S. State Department spokesperson confirmed to TIME that the citizen died Thursday at Jinyintian Hospital in Wuhan, China - the epicenter of the outbreak. Japanese officials also reported the country’s first death from the respiratory illness - a Japanese citizen in his 60s who died in Wuhan, according to Japan Times.

The rate of infections does not seem to be accelerating, and seems to be stabilizing in Hubei, the province worst affected by the outbreak, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Feb. 8 Tedros said that the efforts to contain the virus appear to be “paying off” because the spread of the virus to the rest of the world and to other parts of China has been slow. However, he warned that epidemics may speed up again after stabilizing for a few days.

“Even the global spread, I said it many times, it’s slow now but it may accelerate. So while it is still slow, there is a window of opportunity that we should use to the maximum,” to have a better outcome, Tedros said.

The virus has also killed one person in the Philippines, and another in Hong Kong.

The SARS epidemic resulted in 774 deaths by the time the transmission chain ended in July 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.S. State Department announced that they are offering $100 million to help China and other countries dealing with the virus.

In Japan, officials said Sunday that a total of 135 cases of the virus had been found on a cruise ship that’s been quarantined in Yokohama harbor. The ship was quarantined after the company learned that a passenger from Hong Kong who had been diagnosed with the coronavirus sailed on the ship, the Diamond Princess, last month.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, acknowledged the “stressful situation” for those onboard the ship at WHO’s press conference on Friday. “At the moment, every time there’s a new case, the quarantine extends 14 days so we need to find a way to break that vicious cycle and find a way of organizing the patients on board in a way that we can get people off the ship in due course,” he said. Ryan said on Saturday that the WHO is having discussions with authorities about ways to section off people in different groups to allow some groups to gradually start leaving.

Japan and Singapore have reported the most patients outside of China, with at least 95 and 43 respectively.

So far, 99% of confirmed cases are in China and 80% of the cases in China are in Hubei Province, the WHO stated on Wednesday. Excluding mainland China, there are at least 360 across 24 countries, according to Johns Hopkins University’s virus tracker.