China’s coronavirus outbreak may peak soon, a prominent Chinese expert said on Tuesday, as the death toll soared past 1,000 and worry grew about the true extent of economic disruption to the world’s second-largest economy. Companies struggled to get back to work after an extended Lunar New Year holiday, while hundreds of Chinese firms said they would need loans running into billions of dollars to stay afloat. Layoffs also began, despite assurances by President Xi Jinping that widespread sackings would be avoided. The government’s top medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, held out hope that the epidemic may peak in February and then plateau before easing. “The peak time may be reached at the … middle or late this month,” Zhong, an epidemiologist who won fame for his role in combating an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, told Reuters in an interview. […]