The death toll from China’s novel Coronavirus epidemic jumped past 1,665 on Sunday after 142 more people died, although the number of new cases significantly dropped for a third consecutive day.

The confirmed cases jumped to 68,500 as top WHO experts scramble to assist Beijing contain the virus spread.

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The overall death toll in China due to the deadly Coronavirus on Sunday increased to 2,009 with a total of 68,500 confirmed cases, authorities said.

The National Health Commission said that it had received reports of 1,843 new confirmed cases from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in Hubei to 56,249.

Of the new deaths, 139 were  reported in Hubei, two in Sichuan, and one in Hunan, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The number of new cases, however, appears to have started dropping and a top Chinese health official has said “efforts to control the outbreak have reached the most crucial stage”.

The report said 9,419 infected patients had been discharged from hospital after recovery so far.

“A 67-day-old baby and her mother, who suffered from the novel Coronavirus, were on Saturday discharged from a hospital in China’s Guizhou province after being successfully treated for the infection”, news agency PTI quoted Chinese health authorities as saying.

Some 1,700 medical workers have been infected, with six dying from the COVID-19 illness, officials said, underscoring the country’s struggle to contain the deepening health crisis.

Experts from the World Health Organisation are expected in Beijing on Sunday to join Chinese health authorities in containing the virus, which has spread to several other countries forcing them to temporarily stop tourist arrivals from China.

The Health Commission said that a joint mission with WHO experts will pay field visits to China’s three provincial-level regions to learn the effectiveness of the epidemic control measures. One task of the mission will be to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease.

Several antiviral drugs are under clinical trials and Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir, said Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Centre for Biotechnology Development.

Experts have asked people to frequently wash hands and face, and wear masks.

In another drastic preventive measure, authorities have begun quarantining large quantity of bank notes and coins in the affected areas and sanitising them with UV light before releasing them back into circulation to stop the virus from spreading.

Meanwhile, the number of people who have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus on a quarantined ship ‘Diamond Princess’ off Japan’s coast has risen to 355, the country’s health minister said Sunday.

“So far, we have conducted tests for 1,219 individuals. Of those, 355 people tested positive. Of those, 73 individuals are not showing symptoms,” Katsunobu Kato told a roundtable discussion on public broadcaster NHK — a rise of 70 from the last government toll.

The novel Coronavirus outbreak has caused alarm as it has crossed global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic.

Over 770 people had died worldwide during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak.