FIVE newly confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were reported in Central China’s Hubei Province on Sunday, the provincial health commission said yesterday.

The commission said all patients were previously asymptomatic and were domestically transmitted in the provincial capital Wuhan.

As of Sunday, Hubei had reported 68,134 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,339 in Wuhan.

By Sunday, death toll from the virus in the province stood at 4,512, including 3,869 in Wuhan.

A total of 283,118 close contacts of COVID-19 patients in the province had been tracked by Sunday, 984 of whom were still under medical observation.

After the reporting of a new case Saturday, Dongxihu District of Wuhan, where the confirmed case lived, escalated its risk level from low to medium.

An official has been sacked in Wuhan after the city recently reported six new confirmed COVID-19 cases, local authorities said yesterday.

Zhang Yuxin was removed from his posts for poor management over the closing-off and control of the Sanmin residential community, which is under the jurisdiction of Changqing Street, where Zhang served as secretary and member of the Changqing Street working committee of the Communist Party of China.

Wuhan reported a total of six new confirmed COVID-19 cases Saturday and Sunday. All the patients are from the Sanmin residential community. The community had previously reported 20 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

According to Li Ping, director of the Dongxihu District Health Bureau, more than 20,000 people will eventually undergo nucleic acid testing in batches. Among them, over 5,000 are residents in and around Sanmin residential community, and the other 14,000 are from the nearby market named Duoluokou.

Residents of the Sanmin residential community finished testing yesterday, and the others will be tested in the following days.

The National Health Commission said yesterday that it received reports of 17 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Sunday, of which seven were imported cases reported in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Ten cases were domestically transmitted, with five reported in Hubei, three in Jilin Province, one in Liaoning Province and one in Heilongjiang Province.

(Xinhua)