China’s health authority said it received reports of 142 deaths and 2,009 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on February 16, 2020. Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 1,843 new confirmed cases and 139 deaths.  President Xi Jinping told the Communist Party’s top echelon to tackle the outbreak of a previously unknown coronavirus almost two weeks before Chinese authorities announced that there had been human-to-human transmission of the disease, according to an internal…