Health authorities in mainland China on Tuesday reported 108 new fatalities from the coronavirus, taking the national death toll to 1,018.

The figures, for Monday, marked the first time more than 100 people had died from the disease in a single day. The country’s National Health Commission also reported 2,478 new confirmed cases of the illness, which brought that total to 42,638 as of Monday.

Of the new deaths, 103 were in Hubei province – the epicentre of the outbreak – and five were in other provinces. The virus has also spread to at least 24 countries.

Task force calls in trio

A special task force reviewing prevention efforts in Wuhan, Hubei’s capital, has summoned three local officials for emergency meetings and detailed their failings in containing the outbreak.

Wuhan deputy mayor Chen Xiexing and two district chiefs in the city, Lin Wenshu and Yu Song, were called in for meetings, state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

Officials found to have been negligent would be held accountable, the report said.

Headed by Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, the task force was set up by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Mainland media reported on Friday that Chen Yixin, a protégé of President Xi Jinping, had been added to the team.

‘83 per cent of clusters were in families’

China has had nearly 1,000 cluster outbreaks of the coronavirus and found that 83 per cent occurred in families, with the rest arising in hospitals, schools and shopping malls, said Wu Zunyou, chief scientist of China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, at a media briefing on Tuesday.

Among the cluster cases, 86 per cent were first or second-generation transmissions – people who lived or travelled in Hubei, contracted the virus and passed it to people who were in close contact with them, such as family members or people who shared meals with them.

“Occurrences of these cluster cases showed our control and treatment measures have been effective and it did not spread from small units to bigger areas of society,” Wu said.

Containment ‘must not harm business’

As millions of people in China prepared to return to work, Beijing has said the reopening of businesses should not be hampered by “crude and oversimplified” restrictions.

Up to 160 million people were expected to be returning to their cities of employment over the coming week, according to Xu Yahua, a Chinese ministry of transport official.

The coronavirus outbreak coincided with the Lunar New Year travel season, when millions traditionally travel to spend the holiday with their families. As part of China’s response to the outbreak, the holiday season was extended until February 18, while the authorities have partially locked down more than 80 cities, closing public transport and restricting people’s movements.

Some local governments have required companies to register and gain approval before resuming production, with business owners being detained for resuming without permission – but Beijing indicated on Tuesday that this went further than the central authorities had intended.

“Such a tendency must be stopped,” Ou Xiaoli, a director of top economic planning agency the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference. “We will strictly stop restricting resumption of production in this oversimplified and crude way.”

Hubei has 2,097 new cases

Earlier on Tuesday, Hubei’s provincial health authority reported 2,097 new confirmed cases for Monday, bringing its total to 24,953.

While the number of new cases in Hubei dropped from a day earlier, the number of new deaths there continued to rise. The province had reported 2,618 new cases and 91 deaths on Sunday.

Some 1,552 of the new cases announced on Tuesday were in Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated at a seafood and meat market.

First case among US evacuees

A first confirmed case has been reported among the hundreds of people who were evacuated from China to military bases around the United States, it was reported on Monday.

The infection was found in one of four evacuees with symptoms who had been in hospital isolation before testing negative on Sunday and rejoining more than 200 people under a 14-day quarantine in San Diego, California, US health officials said.