Monday also saw the new confirmed infections of COVID-19 outside Hubei reduced to a number lower than 100 for the first time, Mi told the media..

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said international experts were now on the ground in China to understand the outbreak and inform the next steps in the global response.

The total deaths from the more than two-month-old outbreak as reported on Thursday stood at 1,367, with the total number of confirmed cases mounting to 59,804, health officials were quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland has reached 44,653 by the end of Tuesday and 1,113 people has died of the disease.

The death toll due to nCoV rose to 1,016 and the confirmed cases have gone up to 42,638, according to the commission.

The head of the World Health Organisation said on Saturday that the UN health agency would send an international mission to China as it received a response from Beijing.

'India's acts of goodwill fully demonstrate its friendship with China'

Eighty-nine deaths were reported on Saturday -- the highest single-day death toll -- and there were 2,656 new confirmed cases of the deadly infection, China's National Health Commission said in its daily report on Sunday.

Eighty-six deaths were reported in mainland China with 3,399 fresh cases from 31 provincial-level regions, the country's National Health Commission said on Saturday.

Another 3,143 new cases of infection were reported, which took to 31,161 the total number of confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection from 31 provincial-level regions.

He was the first to report about the virus way back in December last year when it first emerged in Wuhan, the provincial capital of China's central Hubei province.

Chinese officials hope the cases will come down in the coming days with more specialised hospitals being set up in Wuhan. China's ministry of science and technology said that a batch of Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, which will be put into clinical trials to test its efficiency on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is expected to arrive in China soon.

The death toll in China's coronavirus rose sharply to 425 with 64 deaths on Monday and the number of those infected with the deadly disease rose to 20,438, Chinese health authorities said on Tuesday.

As the virus continued to spread at an alarming rate, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday warned officials of punishment if they shirked responsibility in tackling the virus outbreak.

China's National Health Commission in its daily report on Monday said that 2,829 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide on February 2, taking the total number of infection to 17,205.

On Sunday, India airlifted a second batch of 323 stranded Indians and seven Maldivian citizens from coronavirus-hit Wuhan city, taking the total number of people evacuated to 654.

Air India's jumbo B747 made two flights to Wuhan city -- the ground zero of the coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 300 people, infected 14,380 others and spread to 25 countries, including India, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The virus, which has infected more than 14,562 people, continues to spread beyond China.

The six students may have to undergo tests to determine whether they have symptoms of the coronavirus. Ahead of the evacuation, the Indian Embassy had informed the Indians that they will be tested before the flight and undergo 14 day quarantine after reaching India.

So far about 124 positive cases have been reported in a host of countries, including India where the first case was confirmed in Kerala.