WUHAN — Around 5.57 million people in Central China's Hubei province, hit hard by the novel coronavirus outbreak, had returned to work by April 3, according to the provincial department of human resources and social security.

Among them, a total of 3.46 million people had been back to their workplaces outside Hubei, with Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces as the top three destinations.

An official with the department said Hubei had arranged over 22,600 chartered bus trips and 60 trains to send 630,000 migrant workers directly from their homes to factories outside the province at a time when plants across China are rushing to resume work.

No new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were reported on April 4 in Hubei. The province has so far reported 67,803 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,008 in the provincial capital of Wuhan, Hubei health commission said on April 5.