Cyclists and pedestrians traverse a bridge at East Lake in Wuhan, Hubei province, on May 3, 2020. (ZHOU GUOQIANG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

WUHAN/BEIJING - An official has been sacked in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, after the city recently reported six newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, local authorities said Monday.

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 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday and Sunday, all of which were from the Sanmin residential community

Wuhan reported a total of six newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday and Sunday, all of which were 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 undergo nucleic acid testing in batches. Among these people, more than 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 Monday, and the others will be tested in the following days.  

Wuhan, once the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, has seen its urban life gradually return to normal since its lockdown was lifted one month ago after the epidemic ebbed.  

7 out of 17 new cases on mainland imported

The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported 17 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which five were in Hubei and seven were imported cases, Chinese health authorities said Monday.

The National Health Commission said that the seven imported cases reported on the mainland were seen in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Out of the other ten cases, which were transmitted locally, five were reported in Hubei, three in Jilin province, one in Liaoning province and one in Heilongjiang province, the commission said in a daily report.

Hubei's health authorities said the new cases were previously asymptomatic cases in the provincial capital Wuhan.

Seven provincial-level regions on the mainland had reported new cases transmitted domestically in the past 14 days, with an increase in cluster infections, Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the commission, said.

Mi called for efforts to cut off transmission chains by identifying sources of infection and routes of transmission and by stepping up contact tracing, quarantine, treatment and medical observation. 

Meanwhile, no new suspected cases or deaths were reported Sunday on the mainland, according to the commission. 

China has not reported any deaths from COVID-19 for 26 days in a row, Mi noted.

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Altogether, 24 people were discharged from hospitals after recovery on Sunday, while the number of severe cases decreased by four to nine.

A volunteer disinfects the handrail of a staircase at a community in the city of Shulan in Jilin province, China, May 10, 2020. (PHOTO/ XINHUA)As of Sunday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 82,918, including 141 patients who were still being treated, and 78,144 people who had been discharged after recovery. A total of 4,633 people had died of the disease, the commission said.

The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported 17 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which five were in Hubei and seven were imported cases, the National Health Commission said

By Sunday, the mainland had reported a total of 1,690 imported cases. Among those cases, 1,591 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 99 remained hospitalized with three in severe conditions. No deaths from imported cases had been reported.

The commission said three people, all from overseas, were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

Sunday was the first time that the number of severe cases on the mainland dropped below 10 and the number of confirmed imported cases dropped below 100, said Mi.

According to the commission, 5,501 close contacts were still under medical observation after 678 people were released from medical observation Sunday.

Also on Sunday, 12 new asymptomatic cases were reported on the mainland. Six cases were re-categorized as confirmed cases, and 20 asymptomatic cases, including four from overseas, were released from medical observation, according to the commission.

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The commission said 780 asymptomatic cases, including 44 from overseas, were still under medical observation.

As of Sunday, Hubei had reported 68,134 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,339 in Wuhan. The province's death toll stood at 4,512, with 3,869 deaths reported 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 a new case was reported on Saturday, the district of Dongxihu in Wuhan, where the new confirmed patient lived, escalated its risk level from low to medium. 

By Sunday, 1,047 confirmed cases including four deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 45 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 440 in Taiwan including six deaths.

A total of 982 patients in Hong Kong, 41 in Macao, and 366 in Taiwan had been discharged from hospitals after recovery.