Staff members pick up Hubei migrant workers returning to Guangdong at Guangzhou South Railway Station in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, March 19, 2020. With a high-speed railway train carrying 551 migrant workers departing central China's Hubei Province Thursday, the province hard-hit by the coronavirus are sending more workers to south China's manufacturing heartland Guangdong Province. Departing from the city of Jingzhou at 1:20 p.m., the train is the first chartered high-speed railway train from Hubei to send migrant workers to their workplaces after the Spring Festival. On Thursday, a total of 1,631 migrant workers have boarded the trains for Guangdong, with the other high-speed railway train carrying 1,080 people departing at around 3:13 p.m. from Jingzhou heading for Shenzhen. The workers will be send to their workplaces respectively by chartered coaches after they arrive at the railway station. (Xinhua/Lu Hanxin)

WUHAN/GUANGZHOU, March 19  -- With a high-speed railway train carrying 551 migrant workers departing central China's Hubei Province Thursday, the province hard-hit by the coronavirus are sending more workers to south China's manufacturing heartland Guangdong Province.

Departing from the city of Jingzhou at 1:20 p.m., the train is the first chartered high-speed railway train from Hubei to send migrant workers to their workplaces after the Spring Festival.

"I'm so excited that I'm able to board the first chartered train and go back to work," said Chen Anxin, who works at an advertising company in Guangzhou but has been staying in his hometown of Jianli County in Jingzhou for about two months due to the coronavirus outbreak.

On Thursday, a total of 1,631 migrant workers have boarded the trains for Guangdong, with the other high-speed railway train carrying 1,080 people departing at around 3:13 p.m. from Jingzhou heading for Shenzhen.

All the workers had been issued health codes, tested negative after nucleic acid testing and went through a 14-day quarantine before they boarded the trains.

The 551 workers on the first train will arrive in Guangzhou Thursday night, and "point-to-point" trips will be arranged to send them directly to the companies and factories they work for.

Yuan Muleng, from the Shishou County under Jingzhou, works for a mold factory in Dongguan City. "I had got a health code and passed the nucleic acid test before I boarded the train. We're lucky that the government has organized the trip back to work for free. The community that my factory belongs to will pick me up when I arrive in Dongguan," he said.

No new infections of the novel coronavirus were reported on Wednesday in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic and Hubei provincial capital, marking a notable first in the city's months-long battle with the deadly virus.