A freight train carrying donations from Jilin province to Hubei departs Changchun North Railway Station on Feb 14. [Photo/Jilin Daily]

A direct express freight train -- carrying 500 tons of ethanol disinfectant and 500,000 kilograms of rice, as well as other donations -- left Changchun North Railway Station in Changchun, capital of Northeast China’s Jilin province on Feb 14, heading for Wuhan in central Hubei province.

The donations arrived 36 hours later in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pneumonia in China.

Officials said that the ethanol disinfectant was worth 4.58 million yuan ($656,047.67) and the rice 5 million yuan. Hubei province is in urgent need of such supplies, according to its government authorities.

A spokesman from the Jilin Provincial Development and Reform Commission said the donations came from seven companies in six regions in the province, which worked day and night to produce them.

The donations were packaged in special pouches for convenience of allocation and use in Hubei province, according to a local government spokesman.