Hebei province, which entered a "wartime mode" on Tuesday, accounted for 20 of the 23 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases reported in mainland China on Jan. 5.

The health commission director in the city of Qingdao and the director of the local hospital where 12 new cases have been linked were both dismissed.

China reported just 21 new virus cases on Friday, six of them imported, with the rest in the Xinjiang region and Jilin province.

The Associated Press reported that it has now been a month since authorities announced any new deaths from the coronavirus across China.

Questions have long swirled around the accuracy of China’s case reporting, with Wuhan in particular going several days in January without reporting new cases or deaths.

All of the 48 cases were imported, bringing the total number of imported cases in China to 771 as of Monday. There was no reported new case of local infection.

Imported infections, mostly among Chinese nationals returning home, now pose the biggest concern for authorities.

All of the new patients were travellers who came to China from overseas, with the mainland reporting no locally transmitted infections on Wednesday.

The country is seeing a steady rise in imported cases, mostly from Chinese people returning from abroad.