US nonprofit organization Medshare partners with CocaCola Foundation and UPS Foundation to donate 1.8 million masks to China on Monday.

Privately run businesses are playing a major part in the nationwide race to aid Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) epidemic, new data has shown.

As of Sunday, 2,068 companies had offered aid to the virus-hit city in Central China's Hubei Province, involving 20.59 billion yuan ($2.95 billion) in money and materials, according to a Monday posting on the WeChat official account of datagoo, a Chinese platform specializing in data visualization of financial news.

In specific terms, there were 1,376 private businesses, 439 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and 271 foreign firms. Donations by private firms hit 13.28 billion yuan, accounting for 64.49 percent of the total, while those from SOEs made up 28.62 percent of the total and those from foreign businesses tallied 6.89 percent.

Data from the platform revealed that there were 37 firms with donations exceeding 100 million yuan, including Tencent, Alibaba and state-owned food group COFCO. The 37 firms donated over 8.4 billion yuan, accounting for 40.69 percent of the nation's total. 

Major Chinese liquor makers including Wuliangye Yibin and Kweichow Moutai made hefty donations - the former contributed 92 million yuan while the latter gave 80 million yuan. Agricultural Bank of China was the most generous among the six largest state lenders, with 90 million yuan. 

Internet firms such as Tencent and Alibaba contributed largely via the creation of special funds.

For instance, Tencent set up a special fund worth 1 billion yuan on Friday, bringing the amount of its special funding to 1.5 billon yuan.

On the side of foreign businesses, US firms were so far the biggest contributors donating 394.24 million yuan. In light of foreign businesses' edge in terms of overseas purchases of medical items, their donations consisted of both money and various items including masks, protective outfits and disinfectants.