HONG KONG — It’s been hard to be far away from home, watching a pandemic of panic over the new coronavirus ripple across the world.

A month ago I left Seattle for Hong Kong — a city of 7.3 million bordering mainland China and one of the planet’s most densely populated — as part of a Doctors Without Borders effort to rein in the widespread fear gripping the city as it began to wrestle with a virus the world knew little about.

That fear has now reached home.

The news seemed to be positive: The number of new coronavirus cases reported in China over the past week suggested that the outbreak might be slowing — that containment efforts were working.

But on Thursday, officials added more than 14,840 cases to the tally of the infected in Hubei province alone, bringing the total number to 48,206, the largest one-day increase so far recorded. The death toll in the province rose to 1,310, including 242 new deaths.

A new coronavirus outbreak, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has spread throughout Asia and globally, has prompted people around the world to buy medical face masks in hopes of preventing infection.

Cervical cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths in women in 42 low-income and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), with the highest age-standardised incidence rates (40 cases per 100 000 women-years) occurring in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The gross disparity of the burden of this highly preventable disease, whereby 290 000 (51%) of the 570 000 new cases estimated to occur annually befall women in LMICs, has led many people to call attention to the need for urgent action.