A DOCTOR on the front line of the coronavirus outbreak in China has died, reports Reuters.

Quoting a China Global Television Network tweet, it named the doctor as 62-year-old Liang Wudong, who worked at Hubei Xinhua Hospital.

Hubei province is home to the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak of 2019-nCoV, or 2019 Novel Coronavirus, which has claimed at least 41 lives and spread to other countries, including the US, France and Australia.

The virus has infected some 1,300 people in China alone.

Health experts said some human-to-human transmission has been recorded, particularly in Wuhan, a city of 11 million now under lockdown in a bid to limit the spread of the disease.

The virus has caused global concern because of its similarity to SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed hundreds across the mainland and in Hong Kong in 2002 and 2003.

It has struck at possibly the worst time for China, when hundreds of millions of people are travelling across the country or overseas to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday. – January 25, 2020.