As many as 50 people have died in the Iranian city of Qom from the coronavirus in February, The Associated Press cited Iran’s semiofficial ILNA news agency as saying on Monday, Feb. 24.

The new death toll is significantly higher than the latest number of confirmed cases of infections that Iranian officials had reported just a few hours earlier by and which stood at just 12 deaths out of 47 cases, according to state TV.

An official from Qom, Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, was quoted in ILNA saying that more than 250 people are in quarantined in the city, which is a popular place of religious study for Shiites from across Iran and other countries.

He said the 50 deaths date as far back as Feb. 13. Iran, however, first officially reported cases of the virus and its first deaths on Feb. 19.

The new coronavirus originated in China sometime around December. There are concerns that clusters in Iran, as well as in Italy and South Korea, could signal a serious new stage in its global spread. China had 150 new confirmed coronavirus deaths on Sunday, the National Health Commission announced on Monday, pushing the death toll nationwide to 2,592.