NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus spread to ever more countries and world capitals Monday — and the U.S. death toll climbed to six — even as new cases in China dropped to their lowest level in over a month.

A shift in the crisis appeared to be taking shape: Hundreds of patients were released from hospitals at the epicenter of the outbreak in China, while the World Health Organization reported that nine times as many new infections were recorded outside the country as inside it over the past 24 hours.

Alarming clusters of disease continued to swell in South Korea, Italy and Iran, and the virus tu...