The global death toll from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak has reached 724, priming the illness to become more deadly than SARS.
The number of new infections rose on Friday from a day earlier, Chinese health officials said, reversing two days of declines and showing the difficulty of predicting the epidemic's peak.
Japan also confirmed its first national to die from the virus, a man taken to hospital with pneumonia in Wuhan, putting the global death toll just 49 behind the 774 fatalities recorded during the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003.
The UAE also says it has seven cases.
China has rushed to build two new hospitals in Wuhan to cope with the crisis, with the second becoming operational from today.
But demand continues to outstrip supply for beds and medical attention, forcing the city's special anti-virus command to renovate a school facility and four colleges into temporary hospitals.
China is also pursuing technological solutions to the outbreak, with 5G-powered robots being tested in Guangzhou, a port city northwest of Hong Kong, with a view to using them to take people's body temperature.
Hong Kong itself is also ramping up measures to combat the virus, with a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone arriving from mainland China to be enforced from Saturday.
