Coronavirus: Global death toll reaches 427 with two reported dead outside mainland China

…Number of infections passes 20,500.

Hong Kong reported its first death from the new coronavirus on Tuesday – only the second outside mainland China – as the death toll from the outbreak rose to at least 425 and China admitted “shortcomings and difficulties” in its response to the flu-like infection.

The Hong Kong victim was a 39-year-old man who had recently travelled to Wuhan, where the virus originated, and had underlying health problems, the authorities said. It was the second death recorded outside mainland China – the first was in the Philippines on Sunday.

Meanwhile, China’s National Health Commission reported 64 new deaths as of midnight on Monday – the biggest daily increase since the virus was first detected late last year. Wuhan and the surrounding province of Hubei have been effectively sealed off from the rest of the country for more than a week.

There are now 20,438 people confirmed to have the infection in mainland China.

Late on Monday, the Standing Committee of the Politburo – the country’s top leadership – met in Beijing and acknowledged “shortcomings and difficulties” in China’s response to the outbreak.

“This is very rare sort of language to hear,” Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown said from Hong Kong, where he is reporting from the border. “This was the senior leadership of the party essentially admitting they had failed the people. They said officials who had made mistakes would be punished. And they said China would have to improve the way it responded to this sort of national emergency in the future.”

Other countries have rushed to evacuate their citizens from Hubei and its capital city, Wuhan, while many have also imposed extraordinary travel restrictions on travellers to and from China.

More than 150 cases have been reported in two dozen other countries, with the United States reporting the second case of human-to-human transmission on Monday.