Chinese authorities say the death toll from the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, surpassed 16-hundred on Saturday.
 
According to China’s National Health Commission on Sunday, 142 people across China’s 31 provinces died of the disease on Saturday while two-thousand-nine additional cases were reported on the same day.
 
That raises the cumulative death toll and the number of infections compiled as of 12 a.m. Sunday to one-thousand-665 and 68-thousand-500, respectively.
 
Of the new figures, 139 deaths and one-thousand-843 new infections were reported in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the virus.
 
The number of new infections, however, slowed for the 12th consecutive day in other Chinese areas, marking at 166 on Saturday from 890 on February 3.