A day after evacuating 324 Indians from China's Wuhan province in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, Air India airlifted a second batch of 330 people including 323 Indians and seven Maldivian citizens. With this, the total number of people evacuated by India has reached 654, officials said.

The evacuation was carried out using Air India's jumbo B747, that made two flights to Wuhan city - the ground zero of the coronavirus epidemic that has killed 304 people and infected 14,380 others.

"The 2nd #AirIndia flight from #Wuhan has just taken off for #Delhi with 323 Indian citizens on board. 7 Maldives citizens are also being evacuated. Grateful once again to @MFA_China and local authorities all across #Hubei for their assistance," Indian Ambassador to China Vikram Misri tweeted.

"Want to thank my team at @EOIBeijing which mounted a non-stop almost 96-hour long operation to coordinate a complex airlift under challenging circumstances for us, the passengers and local authorities in #Hubei and #Wuhan," he said in another tweet.

"A special word of appreciation for two of our officers who are on board the plane - Deepak Padmakumar and M Balakrishnan - they showed exemplary fortitude and a real spirit of public service by travelling to ground zero in #Wuhan to coordinate airport arrangements. Kudos to both," he tweeted.

Four Indians could not board the second flight after they reported high temperatures, Misri told PTI.

On Saturday, the first flight left with 324 stranded Indians, mostly students from Wuhan.

Meanwhile, the death toll in China due to the deadly coronavirus outbreak has reached 304, while the number of cases has climbed to 14,380, Chinese health officials informed on Sunday.

The cases have been reported in 31 provincial-level regions of the country, according to the daily report by the National Health Commission (NHC).

Another 4,562 new suspected cases were reported on Saturday, said the commission. All the deaths are in Hubei Province.

The NHC further added that 315 patients became seriously ill and 85 people were discharged from hospital after recovery on Saturday, adding that 2,110 patients remained in severe condition, and 19,544 people were suspected of being infected with the virus.

The commission said 1,63,844 close contacts had been traced, adding that among them, 8,044 were discharged from medical observation on Saturday, with 1,37,594 others still under medical observation, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

(With PTI inputs)