Chinese health authorities Wednesday said it received reports of 2,015 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection

Chinese health authorities Wednesday said it received reports of 2,015 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection and 97 deaths on Tuesday from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

Among the deaths, 94 were in Hubei Province and one in Henan, Hunan and Chongqing respectively, according to China’s National Health Commission.

Another 3,342 new suspected cases were reported Tuesday, said the commission.

Also on Tuesday, 871 patients became seriously ill, while 744 people were discharged from hospital after recovery.

Tuesday saw 744 people walk out of the hospital after recovery, including 417 in Hubei province, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 44,653 by the end of Tuesday, and 1,113 people had died of the disease.

The commission added that 8,204 patients remained in severe condition, and 16,067 people were suspected of being infected with the virus.

A total of 4,740 people had been discharged from hospital after recovery.

By the end of Tuesday, 49 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.

One patient in Macao and one in Taiwan have been discharged from hospital after recovery.

Cloud-based office tools like video conferencing to online training modules are gaining traction in China as tens of millions of white-collar workers work from home to avoid the novel coronavirus epidemic.

Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai are the top three cities using video conferencing powered by WeChat Work, an all-in-one communications app dedicated to enterprises, according to a recent report published by its developer Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Users in the three cities were also those who opted the most for online documents, the report said, citing data based on user trends typically since Feb 3, when some companies first resumed operations after the Lunar New Year Holidays this year.

Meanwhile, users in Qinghai, Hainan and Jilin provinces are least reliant on conference calls.

Those working from Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Gansu province and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region are most efficient in their online dialogue, recording the shortest conference call duration on average.

Company owners from Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, where business activities traditionally remain vibrant, are most earnest in collecting health conditions of employees, the report said.

In terms of sectors, education, healthcare and government agencies take the top three spots in handling business requirements via the software. The highest number of online trainings are conducted by users in Guangdong, Hebei and Henan provinces.

Targeting the education industry, WeChat Work also enabled message pushes to parents so that they stand to receive notifications from teachers in a prompt and timely manner. Parents from Baoji of Shaanxi province, Shenzhen and Hebei province’s capital city Shijiazhuang are most active in online engagement with school faculties.

The remote work software market remains unpenetrated in China, with less than 5 million remote workers in the country in 2018, according to Global Workplace Analytics. In contrast, over 80 percent of United States businesses have adopted flexible working arrangements, giving rise to at least 30 million people working outside of the office terrain.

Apart from WeChat Work, other commonly-used or emerging workplace apps include Alibaba’s DingTalk, Huawei’s WeLink, Bytedance’s Feishu, Zoom, among others.

Research by Minsheng Securities forecast a particular surge in areas like human task coordination, video conferencing and online editing.