The head of a hospital in Wuhan today died of coronavirus, according to Chinese media.

Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital, is the first hospital leader to have ‘sacrificed’ in the fight against coronavirus, reported Red Star News.

The news comes after a 59-year-old nurse in the same hospital was killed by the virus last Friday.

Nearly 1,800 people across the world have now died from the killer coronavirus that is rapidly sweeping the planet.

And more than 71,430 have caught the virus, formally known as COVID-19, including 454 on a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan.

Ninety-five per cent of the 2,000 new cases recorded yesterday were diagnosed in Hubei, the deserted Chinese province at the centre of the crisis.