Staff members check the documents of passengers as they disembark from an airplane at Qingdao Liuting International Airport in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province, Feb 25, 2020. (LI ZIHENG / XINHUA)

BEIJING/WUHAN - The Chinese mainland's daily number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 caused by a novel coronavirus outside Hubei province, epicenter of the outbreak, dropped to 5 on Tuesday, according to the National Health Commission.

The commission said Wednesday it received reports of 406 new confirmed cases on Tuesday from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, including 401 from Hubei. 

Tuesday marked the seventh consecutive day that the daily number of new infections on the mainland remained under 1,000.

The National Health Commission reported 406 new confirmed cases and 52 deaths on Tuesday

On Monday, 9 new confirmed cases were reported outside Hubei. The Sunday figure stood at 11. 

ALSO READ: Meeting calls for targeted measures

The commission also reported 52 deaths on Tuesday, all of which were in Hubei.

In Hubei, the provincial health commission reported 401 new confirmed cases, bringing the tally in the hard-hit province to 65,187.

Wuhan, the provincial capital, reported 370 new confirmed cases and 42 deaths on Tuesday. In total, the city has registered 47,441 confirmed cases and 2,085 deaths.

Also on Wednesday, the National Health Commission said 2,422 patients were discharged from hospital after recovery on Tuesday.

The daily number of recovered patients has surpassed that of the newly reported infections for the eighth consecutive day, according to the data

The daily number of recovered patients has surpassed that of the newly reported infections for the eighth consecutive day, according to the data.

A total of 29,745 people had been discharged from hospital after recovery by the end of Tuesday, the commission said.

In Hubei, 2,058 patients were discharged from hospital after recovery on Tuesday, bringing the total number of discharged patients in the province to 20,912.

Among the 36,242 hospitalized patients in the province, 6,840 were still in severe condition and another 1,486 in critical condition.

The provincial commission also said Hubei had 2,067 suspected cases, after 533 suspected cases were ruled out while 311 new suspected cases were reported on Tuesday.

READ MORE: WHO calls China's antivirus effort 'aggressive, agile'

Meanwhile, another 439 new suspected cases were reported Tuesday, said the National Health Commission.

By the end of Tuesday, 2,715 people had died of the disease and 78,064 confirmed cases had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions on the mainland.  

The commission said that 2,491 people were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

It added that 647,406 close contacts had been traced, and that among them, 14,573 were released from medical observation Tuesday, with 79,108 others still under medical observation.

By the end of Tuesday, 85 confirmed cases including two deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 10 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 31 in Taiwan including one death.

Eighteen patients in Hong Kong, seven in Macao and five in Taiwan had been discharged from hospital after recovery.