WUHAN - Wuhan, the hardest-hit city of the novel coronavirus outbreak in central China, has planned to transform 24 general hospitals for temporary use to cope with the increasing number of patients with fever, said the city's health commission on Saturday.

On the basis of the two designated hospitals and 61 fever clinics, the megacity decided to transform the 24 local hospitals in batches to provide thousands of beds for patients.

In the first batch, seven hospitals have been transformed in accordance with the basic requirements of infectious disease prevention and control institutions to accept fever patients.

The second and third batch will involve three and 14 general hospitals, respectively.

Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, has over 4,000 beds for infected and suspected patients, and will have 6,000 more beds by the end of the month.

On Friday, Hubei reported 180 new confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus and 15 new deaths, the provincial health authorities announced Saturday.