BEIJING — China has very much fastened the testing process of the novel coronavirus infection in Hubei province, which makes the number of the suspected cases dropped in recent days, experts said on Feb 5.

It also leads to an obvious increase in the number of confirmed cases, said Li Xingwang, an infectious disease expert with Beijing Ditan Hospital at the daily press briefing on the epidemic.

Li, also a member of China's national expert team against the coronavirus, said it is normal to see a surge in the number of patients who are in severe conditions when the number of the confirmed cases grows.

As the testing capability improved across the country, more suspected cases become confirmed or excluded, said Song Shuli, an official with the National Health Commission.

For confirmed cases, the patients can get better treatment in a shorter period of time, and for excluded cases, they can go back to their normal life, she added.

The commission said it received reports of 3,971 new suspected cases on Feb 4 on the Chinese mainland, compared with 5,072 cases reported on Feb 3 and 5,173 on Feb 2.

Also, 3,887 new confirmed cases were reported on Feb 4, compared with 3,235 on Feb 3 and 2,829 on Feb 2.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 24,324 by the end of Feb 4, the commission said, noting that a total of 490 people had died of the disease.