No new cases of internal coronavirus transmissions have been registered in China for a second straight day, the National Health Commission said on Friday.
A total of 39 cases of COVID-19 were added on Friday, all of them imported, according to the health authorities, and three more deaths were registered.
"The National Health Commission received information about 80,967 confirmed cases of pneumonia caused by a new type of coronavirus from 31 provinces [regions and municipalities], including 6,569 currently ill people. 2,136 people are in critical condition, 3,248 have died, 71,150 people have been discharged from hospitals", the authorities said in a statement.
Imported cases were recorded in Beijing (6), the province of Guangdong (14), Shanghai (8), Fujian (3), Heilongjiang (1), Liaoning (1), Zhejiang (1), Shandong (1), Sichuan (1), Gansu (1), city of Tianjin (1), and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (1). The total number of imported COVID-19 cases in China has reached 228.
No new cases of the coronavirus have been registered in the province of Hubei, where the city of Wuhan – the epicentre of the pandemic – is located.
The number of total virus cases in China means that it is still the most COVID-19 affected country. However, Italy surpassed China's COVID-19 death toll on Thursday and now has the highest number of fatalities - 3,405.
As infection figures spike globally, the coronavirus epicentre has now shifted from China to Europe, where apart from Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are the worst hit by the virus.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on 11 March. As of today, more than 240,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 9,800 fatalities.
