The flight arrived at Wuhan's Tianhe International Airport on Friday evening. While the official number of students to be airlifted in the two flights is not known, Indians who reached the Wuhan airport on Friday said they were told that 374 were expected to be airlifted by the Air India flight. India has taken an undertaking from the Indians travelling in the two flights that they would be quarantined for 14 days after their arrival, besides undergoing special checks at the Wuhan airport.

Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 5,806 confirmed cases, including 204 deaths, official media reported.

The coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, capital of China's Hubei province, in December and has now spread across the globe. The Chinese authorities are trying to contain the epidemic while other countries, including India, are working on plans to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.

The Chinese health authorities announced on Wednesday that 5,974 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions by the end of Tuesday.

An outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness that started in the city of Wuhan in China has put health authorities on high alert around the world. The new coronavirus-named 2019-nCoV-is thought to have originated in the food market of the central China metropolis and has since infected more than 4,000 people worldwide.

A sense of disquiet prevailed in Beijing as officials announced the capital's first death from the deadly virus, a grim reminder that the epidemic has begun to take toll outside Hubei province.

A meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba reviewed India's preparedness to deal with the virus amid mounting global concern over increasing number of cases in China and several other countries.

India on Sunday opened a third hotline in view of 'large number' of phone calls from the Indians who are mostly students, the Indian Embassy in Beijing said.

While Wuhan and 17 others cities in Hubei province remained the epicentre of the viral disease outbreak with most of the deaths having taken place there, the cases have started rising steadily in most of the Chinese provinces and cities, including Beijing.

It has triggered a cause of concern for India too as many of the 700 odd Indian students studying in universities of Wuhan and Hubei provinces are still stuck up there.

By Thursday, 830 confirmed cases of pneumonia, caused by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), had been reported in 29 provincial-level regions in the country.

According to the latest reports, the death toll in the deadly coronavirus has climbed to 25 with confirmed cases rising sharply to 830, mostly in Hubei province. Beijing has reported 26 cases so far.

The confirmed cases climbed to 571 mostly from the city of Wuhan with 17 deaths so far. The Wuhan government required all people in public places such as hotels, restaurants, cinemas, parks, shopping centres and public transports to wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus, according to an announcement on Wednesday night. The rule took effect immediately.

Several countries started screening travellers coming from China, especially from Wuhan to detect symptoms like fever.

The new data comes a day after China and the US signed a long-awaited phase one deal, marking a ceasefire in the 18-month-long trade war which saw the world's two largest economies slap 25 per cent tariffs on about half a trillion-dollar worth of each other's exports. The world's second-largest economy grew by 6.1 per cent last year, its worst performance since 1990, but it remained above the psychologically important mark of six per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

'We should carefully handle issues concerning each other's core interests. We should properly manage and control problems that cannot be solved for the time being'

The aircraft carrier is China first domestically-built ship. Shandong is bigger than China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning and could house 36 fighter jets.

Singh visited Tawang on Thursday for the 'Maitree Diwas' celebrations to boost civil-military friendship in the region bordering China.

Asked for China's comments on India not joining the RCEP deal over concern of cheap Chinese products potentially harming its domestic industry, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told the media in Beijing on Tuesday that China welcomes India joining the deal.

'Xi's meeting with Modi in the southern Indian city of Chennai on Friday and Saturday is expected to focus more on the two countries' historical and present differences, and how to move beyond them to realise their cooperation potential'