China says no new coronavirus deaths for first time

China on Tuesday reported no new deaths from the deadly coronavirus for the first time since it started publishing figures in January but the number of imported infections increased to 983 with 32 new confirmed cases, health officials said.

China's National Health Commission on Tuesday said that no death was reported on Monday. The official death toll in China is 3,331.

It is a landmark in China's over two-month-long fight against the deadly virus as the country continued to report coronavirus deaths till Sunday, especially from the epicentre Hubei province.

The overall confirmed cases on the mainland have reached 81,740 by Monday, including 1,242 patients still being treated, 77,167 patients discharged after recovery, and 3,331 people died of the disease, the NHC said.

While no new domestically transmitted cases of the coronavirus were reported, 32 imported cases were reported on Monday taking their total to 983, it said.

A total of 30 new asymptomatic COVID-19 cases were reported on the mainland on Monday, including nine imported ones, it said.

Asymptomatic coronavirus cases are those who test positive for the virus but do not show any symptoms and have the potential to cause sporadic clusters of infections.

Last week, China began disclosing the number of asymptomatic cases for the first time, after growing public concerns over the potential of "silent" carriers to spread the disease.

The NHC said 1,033 asymptomatic cases were still under medical observation, including 275 from abroad.

By Monday, 914 confirmed cases, including four deaths have been reported in the Hong Kong, 44 confirmed cases in Macao and 373 in Taiwan including five deaths.

China for the first time issued an official timeline of coronavirus on Monday in which it stated that coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in "late December 2019" where the infection was listed as "pneumonia of unknown cause", but skirted the key question about its origin.

In late last December, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in central China's Hubei province detected cases of "pneumonia of unknown cause", state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the 38-page timeline document.

China has faced criticism over the COVID-19 crisis and Beijing has been accused of using its "propaganda" to hush-up coronavirus cases.

China and the US had a lengthy spat over origin of the virus.

While US President Donald Trump called COVID-19 as "China virus" and "Wuhan virus", Beijing said such allegations amounted to stigmatising China. Beijing said the origin of the COVID-19 can be determined only by scientific and professional views.

The US has accused China of delayed action resulting in the pandemic spreading to other countries, an allegation Beijing vehemently refuted asserting that it was working with the international community in an "open and highly responsible manner" to contain the global crisis.

According to estimates by the Johns Hopkins University, there are over 1.34 million confirmed coronavirus cases across the world and over 74,000 people have died of it.