The number of tourist arrivals in Thailand plummeted 44.3 percent in February compared with the previous year due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) said Monday.

The drop is being attributed to the loss of Chinese tourists, Thailand's biggest source of visitors. To stop the novel coronavirus from spreading to other countries and regions, China decided to ban all of its overseas tour groups and travel packages in late January. Chinese citizens were asked to suspend non-essential outbound trips.

As a recent report by Tourism Economics pointed out, the countries that are more dependent on Chinese tourists are more likely to be hit harder by the crisis. Thailand is one of them.

TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn said in a meeting that the number of Chinese visitors to Thailand tumbled 85.3 percent in February.

As of Monday, there are over 105,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases globally. Thailand has so far reported 50 infections with one death. To curb virus transmission, the government has tightened travel restrictions.

The government has also listed severely-affected areas on the Chinese mainland, China's special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, South Korea, Italy and Iran as "Disease Infected Zones of the COVID-19 Outbreak,"  according to the TAT. Visitors arriving from these areas are required to go through a 14-day self-quarantine.

Last year, 11 million Chinese tourists spent nearly 18 billion U.S. dollars in Thailand, more than a quarter of the total spending of foreign tourists.