'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.

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.