Christmas Island is the preferred location to send Australians from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which is docked in the Japanese port of Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.

The plan will depend on capacity at the island facility, which for weeks has been housing hundreds of Australians evacuated from China's Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak.

More than 200 Australians are expected to be moved off Christmas Island on Monday, after  completing their 14-day quarantine, according to a source on the island.

A second group will stay to complete their 14-day quarantine period until February 24 or thereabouts.

If there is not enough room on Christmas Island for new evacuees from the Princess Diamond, they could be sent to Darwin, according to the source close to the government.

No current quarantined Australians at Christmas Island and Darwin have tested positive for the virus.

The National Security meeting comes as an Australian public health expert has arrived in Japan, to help authorities deal with concerns about passengers aboard the cruise ship - alongside other international experts.

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The ship, owned by Carnival Corp, has been quarantined since arriving in Yokohama on February 3, after a man who disembarked in Hong Kong before it travelled to Japan was diagnosed with the virus.

Those testing positive are being transferred to Japanese hospitals.

No one from the ship has died of the virus.

"We must anticipate a spread of infections from now and must build medical systems and so on to focus efforts to prevent people from becoming gravely ill or dying," the Japanese health minister said on state broadcaster NHK.

Victorian woman Vera Koslova-Fu has been confined to her cabin with husband Sean, while her two sons, aged 18 and 21, are in another cabin down the hall.

She said people were trying to get fresh air and exercise, and that tensions on board were rising with a lack of clarity over what would happen next.

"I'm angry our government has not done anything useful," she said via text message on Sunday. "Mood onboard are [sic] people are frightened of the unknown".

She said the possibility of being sent to Christmas Island was 'not ideal'.

"I want everyone to be [swab] tested," she said. "If I test negative then I'm happy to self quarantine at home".

First coronavirus death in Europe

Meanwhile, Europe has recorded its first fatality of the coronavirus outbreak. The death is the fourth outside mainland China and outside Asia.

An 80-year-old Chinese man who was a tourist in France died in hospital in Paris due to the flu-like virus, now officially known as COVID-19, authorities said on Saturday.

Outside mainland China, there have been about 500 cases in some two dozen countries and territories, with four deaths - in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and now France.

Health checks at Australian ports

Passengers arriving into Sydney and Melbourne on some cruise ships are being assessed by health experts for coronavirus to prevent the spread of the disease.

NSW Health said on Sunday that a risk assessment would be completed before each ship's arrival into Sydney and then a decision would be made on whether to disembark passengers from the ship.

The health authority insists it is a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Passengers arriving in Sydney on a cruise ship from New Zealand on Sunday would be assessed as a "safeguard," the health authority said in a statement.

"No outbreak of COVID-19 has been identified by doctors onboard the vessel that set sail from Auckland and travelled around New Zealand to Australia. However, as a safeguard, any unwell passengers will be assessed by health teams here," NSW Health said.

A spokeswoman for the Victorian Ports Corporation said there were no suspected cases on board ships that had arrived, or were set to arrive, in Melbourne.

"We have health checks and screenings for all passengers boarding and disembarking ships," she said.

"We're getting updates every day, and working very closely with the cruise companies."

Cruise season runs from spring to autumn and, according to the cruise ship schedule, Melbourne is currently receiving up to 10 arrivals each week.

China reveals authorities knew early about deadly virus

China released updated coronavirus figures on Sunday, as it became apparent that the country's leadership was aware of the potential gravity of the situation well before the alarm was sounded.

There are 2009 new cases in mainland China, bringing its total number of confirmed cases to 68,500 and death toll to 1665, according to the country's National Health Commission.

Data compiled and independently verified by Johns Hopkins University’s Centre for Systems Science and Engineering put the figure at over 69,000 with 1669 deaths on Sunday.

After Chinese President Xi Jinping played a muted public role in the early days of the epidemic, state media published on Saturday evening a speech Xi delivered on February 3, in which he said he gave instructions on fighting the virus as early as January 7.

The disclosure indicates top leaders were aware of the outbreak's potential severity well before such dangers were made known to the public. It was not until late January that officials said the virus can spread between humans and public alarm began to rise.

In his speech, Xi also revealed that he ordered a lockdown of the virus epicentre: "On January 22, in light of the epidemic's rapid spread and the challenges of prevention and control, I made a clear request that Hubei province implement comprehensive and stringent controls over the outflow of people."

The coronavirus outbreak - recently officially named COVID-19 - began in December in Wuhan, capital of the central Chinese province of Hubei.

It has since spread to more than 24 countries and prompted sweeping prevention measures from the Chinese government, including a lockdown of cities with a combined population of more than 60 million.