Police officers wear face masks Wednesday in front of a hotel on Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands. Spanish officials say a hotel on the island has been placed under quarantine after an Italian doctor staying there tested positive for the new coronavirus.

AP

“Yesterday, the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time,” the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday in an update on the coronavirus disease COVID-19.

“Outside China, there are now 2,790 cases in 37 countries, and 44 deaths,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva. By contrast, the WHO says, only 10 new cases were reported in mainland China outside of Hubei province, where the virus emerged months ago.

The latest global tally includes dozens of new cases in South Korea, Italy and Iran…