The death toll from coronavirus jumped by 73 to 563 on Thursday.

The great majority of deaths have been in mainland China, as experts intensified efforts to find a vaccine for a disease.

Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, have reported 70 new deaths on Wednesday and 2,987 new confirmed cases – more than 80 percent of the total reported by Chinese authorities.

The other fatalities were in Tianjin city, the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and Guizhou province in the southwest.

There have been two deaths outside mainland China – in the Philippines and Hong Kong – both involving people who had been to Wuhan where more than 400 people have died.

Hundreds of foreigners have been evacuated from Wuhan and placed in quarantine centres around the world, and thousands of passengers and crew were in lockdown on two cruise ships in Asian waters.