Family recovered from coronavirus returns home in Beijing

BEIJING (Reuters) - After being treated for coronavirus in a Beijing hospital for over two weeks, three members of the Liu family have recovered and were allowed to return home on Friday, a family member said.

The family's encounter with the virus began when the parents of a 29-year-old Beijing man surnamed Liu, who are from central China's Hubei province, briefly stopped in Wuhan, the outbreak's epicentre, on their way to Beijing for the Lunar New Year.

The mother was diagnosed with coronavirus on Jan. 29, and her son and his wife and their one-year-old son were all subsequently found to have been infected with coronavirus.

"I was a little bit scared at the beginning, but the fears eased as medical workers took good care of us and encouraged us everyday," Liu's 31-year-old wife said during a group interview organised by the government at the Beijing YouAn Hospital, where the couple and their one-year-old son were all treated.

The family only provided surnames, and the grandmother's condition was not immediately available.

The coronavirus outbreak has killed 1,380 in China and infected more than 63,000 in the country.

The city of Beijing has reported 372 infections and three deaths as of Thursday. Of those infected, 79 had recovered and returned home as of Thursday, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Commission.

On Friday, the Liu family was among eight recovered coronavirus patients who left the YouAn hospital, headed for a few days of home quarantine.

According to the National Health Commission, the fatality rate for confirmed coronavirus cases in Hubei province was 3.1% as of Feb 3, and 0.16 percent in the rest of the country.

(Reporting by Muyu Xu, Thomas Suen and Tony Munroe; Editing by Giles Elgood)