The new coronavirus has killed more people than SARS did.

The coronavirus death toll in China has risen to 811, surpassing the toll from the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003, according to official data released on Sunday.

The number of confirmed infections rose to 37,198, according to China’s National Health Commission. Eighty-nine deaths and 2,656 new cases were recorded in the preceding 24 hours, most of them in Hubei Province, the heart of the outbreak.

A US citizen died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, American officials said on Saturday.

The SARS epidemic, which also began in China, killed 774 people worldwide. There have been only two confirmed deaths from the new coronavirus outside mainland China — one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

Many doctors believe that deaths and infections from the current epidemic in China are undercounted because testing facilities at hospitals and laboratories are under strain.

The number of new cases confirmed in the country has stabilised in recent days, but World Health Organization officials cautioned against reading too much into those numbers, saying that Wuhan and Hubei were still in the midst of a “very intense outbreak”.

“It’s very, very early to make any predictions,” said Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme. “This is still a very, very intense outbreak in Wuhan and Hubei.”

The measures put in place in Hubei appear to be “paying off”, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, but he warned that the course of outbreaks like these is unpredictable. “We have to understand it with caution because it can show stability for a few days and then they can shoot up,” he said. “I’ve said it many times, it’s slow now but it may accelerate.”

Cases in UK, Spain

Britain on Sunday confirmed a new coronavirus case, bringing the total cases in the country to four. The infected person was a “known contact of a previously confirmed UK case,” the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said in a statement.

The announcement came just hours after a flight from Wuhan, China, carrying 200 Britons and European nationals arrived in Britain. About 150 of the passengers were taken to a center in Milton Keynes, England, to be quarantined for 14 days.

The authorities in Spain said on Sunday that the country had confirmed its second coronavirus case: a British man who lives on the island of Majorca with his family.

The man, whose identity was not disclosed, had reported to the hospital on Friday, and was later joined there by his wife and two children to undergo testing for the virus. The wife and children tested negative, according to Spain’s national centre for microbiology.

The infected man, who has been quarantined, had been in contact with a person who tested positive for the virus in France, Spanish officials said.

Fernando Simón, the director of the centre that coordinates emergencies within the spanish health ministry, told reporters on Sunday that the man “is in good health, is showing almost no symptoms, but has to be kept isolated as long as he is positive.”

Japan cruise ship

Six more people on the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that has been quarantined for nearly a week in Yokohama, Japan, have tested positive for the coronavirus, passengers were told in an onboard announcement on Sunday.

About 3,700 people on the ship, including crew members, have been quarantined since Monday, after it was learned that a passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong on January 25 had tested positive for the virus.

The Japanese health authorities have tested hundreds of people on the ship, and as of Saturday, 64 had tested positive for the coronavirus. The six new cases, which were confirmed by Japan’s health ministry on Sunday, bring the total to 70.

The announcement, a recording of which was posted online, said the six people were being taken off the ship for treatment.

Separately, all 1,800 crew members aboard a cruise ship that had been held for days in Hong Kong, the World Dream, tested negative for the coronavirus, a Hong Kong health official said on Sunday.