The railway authorities said 2.6 million train trips are expected to be made on Saturday, the first day of the first lunar month, which is a 38.4 percent drop year-on-year.

The month straddling the Chinese Lunar New Year should be the busiest season for train operators nationwide, as hundreds of millions of passengers head home for family reunions or travel elsewhere for leisure.

But this year, many passengers have answered government calls to avoid traveling in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which is behind the pneumonia-like disease which first broke out in Wuhan, Hubei province, and has since spread nearly across China and beyond.

The fast-spreading contagious disease has strained the supply of surgical masks and other protective gear.

According to the railway authorities, they had transported 695,000 surgical masks, 180,000 protective gloves and 23 metric tons of drugs as of 6 pm Friday to ease the shortages.