The death toll from the novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) surged past 900 in mainland China on Monday, overtaking global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, even as the World Health Organization said the outbreak appeared to be stabilising.

According to the data from China’s National Health Commission, 97 more deaths and 3,062 new confirmed cases of novel Coronavirus infection were reported on Sunday from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Xinhua reported.

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With 91 more people dying in Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak, the toll is now higher than the 774 killed worldwide by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The latest data came after the WHO said the last four days had seen “some stabilising” in Hubei, but warned the figures could still “shoot up”.

On Sunday, 296 patients became seriously ill, while 632 people were discharged from hospital after recovery.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 40,171 until midnight, and 908 people had died of the disease.

The epidemic has prompted the government to lock down whole cities as anger mounts over its handling of the crisis — especially after a whistleblowing doctor fell victim to the virus.

The doctor, 34, died early Friday, after contracting the virus from a patient.

A WHO “international expert mission” left late Sunday for China, the agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter. The mission is led by Bruce Aylward, a veteran of previous health emergencies.

While the death toll has climbed steadily, new cases have declined since Wednesday’s single-day peak of nearly 3,900 people nationwide.

By the end of Sunday, 36 confirmed cases including one death had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 10 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 18 in Taiwan.

Meanwhile, amid anger over the inefficiency in handling the situation by the government, a Chinese citizen journalist, who has been broadcasting via mobile phone from inside Wuhan — the epicentre of the Coronavirus outbreak — has been missing since Thursday, friends and relatives said.

According to reports, authorities have told his family that the journalist has been forcibly quarantined in an undisclosed location.

In the meantime, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday said that there have been “concerning instances” of Coronavirus among people with no travel history to China, warning that it could be the “tip of the iceberg”, as he urged all countries to prepare for the possible arrival of the novel virus.

“There’ve been some concerning instances of onward 2019nCoV spread from people with no travel history to China. The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries; in short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg,” tweeted Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO.

“In an evolving public health emergency, all countries must step up efforts to prepare for #2019nCoV’s possible arrival and do their utmost to contain it should it arrive. This means lab capacity for rapid diagnosis, contact tracing and other tools in the public health arsenal,” he said.

The Coronavirus is a large family of viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndromes, but the virus in China is a novel strain and not seen before.

The deadly virus has spread to more than 25 countries.

(With agency inputs)