(Yicai Global) Feb. 12 -- Time spent on short video apps in China jumped to 17.3 percent of total network usage time over the Lunar New Year, a new report said, driven by a holiday period that was extended as a measure to tackle the deadly coronavirus epidemic.

People heeded the call to stay at home, leading to greater use of internet and mobile services, according to the report published today by mobile network big data company Quest Mobile. Total time spent online was boosted by information searches, purchases of protective gear, remote work and study, along with news reading.

Chinese internet users spent 5 billion hours online daily from Jan. 23. The figure hit 5.76 billion hours on Jan. 24, when live streaming of the construction work began on the makeshift Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, the city at the heart of the virus outbreak, and 6.61 billion hours on Feb. 3 as people started working from home.

The ratio of mobile game playing time remained at 12.2 percent, while news apps jumped to 9 percent from 8.2 percent a year earlier, and online video play time rose to 8.7 percent from 8.4 percent, the report said.

Average daily user increase of short video apps Kuaishou and TikTok exceeded 40 million over the holiday. Among daily social networks and news media, Weibo users jumped by 40 million, Sina News app users rose 25 million, and Toutiao by 20 million. In the gaming arena, the number of players of Tencent Holdings'  Game for Peace and Honor of Kings, jumped 27.47 million and 26.29 million, respectively.

In addition, the need to learn more about the epidemic boosted the number of daily active users on Diangdang Kuaiyao's medical service app to 160,000, for a yearly growth rate of over 950 percent, and DXY.cn's daily active users rose to 300,000, up 222 percent.

Editor: Peter Thomas