ANKARA

As the West’s fight against COVID-19 heats up, China, the pandemic’s original epicenter, reported no local cases of coronavirus over the last 24 hours, health authorities said on Wednesday. 

In its daily briefing on coronavirus, the Chinese National Health Commission said the country reported a total of 47 new infections, all of them recent arrivals from abroad.

It also reported four new deaths, three in the hardest-hit Hubei province, briging the total number of fatalities on the mainland to 3,281.

Some 491 patients were released from hospital after treatment, and 1,215 people who had had close contact with infected patients were released from medical observation. The number of serious cases fell by 174, said the commission.

With the latest figures, the number of total COVID-19 cases reached 81,218, as the total number of imported cases stands at 474.

After emerging in Wuhan in the Hubei province last December, coronavirus has spread to at least 169 countries and regions, hitting Iran hard, as well as European countries and the U.S.

The death toll in Italy is over 6,800, double the fatalities in China, as virus-related deaths reached 3,000 in Spain, 1,100 in France, and 800 in the U.S.

The World Health Organization has declared it a pandemic.

Out of more than 423,000 confirmed cases worldwide, the death toll stands at nearly 19,000, while over 108,000 have recovered, according to data compiled by U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.