China Registers 54 New Imported COVID-19 Cases In 24 Hours, 3 People Died - Authorities

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 28th March, 2020) China has registered 54 new imported cases of COVID-19 and no cases of internal transmission within the past 24 hours, with three people having died of the disease, the National Health Commission said on Saturday.

The new cases have been recorded in Shanghai (17), Beijing (3), Tianjin (5), the province of Guangdong (11), Fujian (6), Zhejiang (4), Liaoning (3), Jilin (2), Shandong (1) and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (2). The whole number of imported COVID-19 cases in China has reached 649.

"The National Health Commission received information about 81,349 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by a new type of coronavirus from 31 provinces [regions and municipalities], including 3,128 currently ill people. 921 people are in critical condition, 3,295 have died, 74,971 people have been discharged from hospitals," the commission said in a statement.

No new cases of the coronavirus have been registered in the province of Hubei, where the city of Wuhan - the epicenter of the pandemic - is located.

The number of confirmed cases in Hong Kong stands at 518 people, with four patients having died and 111 more having been discharged from hospitals. Thirty-four people have been infected with the disease in Macao, with 10 of them having been released from medical facilities. The number of infected people in Taiwan amounts to 267, with two of them having died and 30 others recovered.

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 590,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with more than 27,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.