Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Sunday said that the Alpine nation will receive intensive care patients from Portugal, without specifying a number.

Kurz said in a tweet that "swift, unbureaucratic help" was required to save lives, adding that Austria has previously taken in patients from France, Italy and Montenegro.

But Austria has its own problems too, with thousands of protesters facing off with police in Vienna at the site of a banned far-right protest against the country's lockdown. A similar protest was held in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The German military says it will send medical aid and doctors to Portugal, which has one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks relative to its population.

Portugal has now sealed itself off from travel to contain the coronavirus, and re-introduced controls at the border with its neighbour and EU partner Spain.

Also on Sunday, German police broke up an illegal party with around 200 guests in the state of North Rhine Westphalia.

The open-air party was held overnight on the grounds of a former rocket launch station in a forest, and the large gathering broke coronavirus rules in the area.

Meanwhile, China recorded more than 2000 new domestic cases of COVID-19 for January, the highest monthly total since the tail end of the initial outbreak in Wuhan in March of last year.

Most of the new cases have been in three northern provinces. Hardest-hit Hebei province, which borders Beijing, has reported more than 900 cases. Beijing, the Chinese capital, has itself had 45 cases this month.

It comes as a World Health Organisation team investigating the origins of the deadly virus visit the Wuhan seafood market where it was first detected.

Australian Associated Press