Fatalities
On Saturday the first fatalities of foreigners were reported, one a US citizen, and the other Japanese. Both fatalities occurred in China.
It is not clear in the data which set of cases these occurred from, but presumably they were from the Chinese data set. These fatalities were 60 Y/O and mid 60's. The Japanese citizen was admitted into hospital in Wuhan around 16 January with suspected viral pneumonia.
The time from contact to fatality is quite long in a number of cases, considering the Japanese national and Dr Li, total time is anywhere between 40 days to 23 days with a lot of variability. The first fatalities that were attributed to NCoV were also around 40 days after the first assumed contagion in the wet market. If that is correct, then the foreign fatalities, offshore of PRC will take further time to occur, and these first two foreign national fatalities are part of the Chinese morbidity cohort, and do not indicate as yet a commencement of fatalities resulting from the spread of the virus external to China. The external fatalities may commence at a later date, anywhere from another 10 days or more from now showing a similar development to Chinese events. That is the long end of the timeline, there is more likelihood that the spread external to Chia occurred earlier than currently reported, through the many asymptomatic travellers who then were embedded in day to day activity without awareness of their status. Medical resources in China are under stress treating their caseload, and that could well impact adversely the outcome within the Chinese medical system. If the spread is minimised externally, that stress may be avoided globally. 2020 is off to a lousy start.
However... since the beginning of Feb, total cases are showing a much lower rate of growth, currently running nearly a constant increase per day, which indicates that some controls are effective, or reporting is incorrect. fatalities are still trending up in rate but as stated previously, there is a lag in the fatalities and unless medical intervention becomes more effective, short term increase in rate of fatalities per day would continue until reaching the lag time for the current rate of case reporting.