A staff disinfects the subway station of Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, March 23, 2020. (SHEN BOHAN / XINHUA)

WUHAN/BEIJING - China still must not lower its guard over the prevention and control work in containing COVID-19 caused by a novel coronavirus, Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission said at a press conference Tuesday.

Citing the overall number of COVID-19 patients across the globe has gone beyond 300,000, Mi said that the risk of the spread of the virus caused by sporadic new cases and imported cases still exists in China.

Mi said that a total of 78 new confirmed cases were reported Monday on the Chinese mainland, including 74 imported cases. 

The National Health Commission said it received reports of 78 new confirmed cases on the mainland on Monday, of which one was in Hubei's Wuhan and  another 74 were imported from abroad

Of the imported cases, 31 were reported in Beijing, 14 in Guangdong, nine in Shanghai, five in Fujian, four in Tianjin, three in Jiangsu, two in Zhejiang and Sichuan respectively. Shanxi, Liaoning, Shandong and Chongqing each reported one case. 

Beijing and Shanghai each reported one case infected by imported patient, and Hubei province and Guangdong province each reported one domestically transmitted case.

On Monday, seven deaths and 35 new suspected cases were reported on the mainland, the National Health Commission said.

One new confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported Monday in Wuhan after the former hardest-hit city saw zero new reports for five consecutive days.

The health commission of Hubei province, where Wuhan is the capital, said Tuesday the latest case in Wuhan was the only new COVID-19 case in the central Chinese province Monday.

Hubei has so far reported a total of 67,801 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 50,006 in Wuhan.

Hubei saw seven newly reported deaths, all of which were in Wuhan, bringing the total number of deaths in the province to 3,160.

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A total of 456 people were discharged from hospital after recovery on Monday, while the number of severe cases decreased by 176 to 1,573, according to the National Heatlh Commission.

The overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 81,171 by the end of Monday, including 4,735 patients who were still being treated, 73,159 patients who had been discharged after recovery, and 3,277 people who died of the disease.

By the end of Monday, 427 imported cases had been reported, according to the commission.

The commission said that 132 people were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

The commission added that 12,077 close contacts were still under medical observation. On Monday, 769 people were released from medical observation.

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Hubei saw 444 patients discharged from hospital after recovery on Monday. Among the 4,200 patients being treated in hospital, 1,203 were still in severe condition and another 336 in critical condition, according to the provincial health commission.

On Tuesday, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Taiwan increased by 20 to 215, the island's epidemic monitoring agency said.

Among the island's confirmed cases, 178 were imported. Twenty-nine of the confirmed patients have recovered, and two died of the disease. The rest are in stable condition. 

By the end of Monday, 356 confirmed cases including four deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 25 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR.

A total of 101 patients in Hong Kong and 10 in Macao had been discharged from hospital after recovery.