Chinese health officials reported no new deaths from the novel coronavirus outbreak over the last 24 hours, the first such report since January.

The National Health Commission said Tuesday that it only had 32 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, all of them from people who have returned from overseas.

The declining number of new cases and fatalities come as authorities in central Hubei province are making plans to further ease a mandatory quarantine in the city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus was first detected late last year.

China has recorded over 80,000 total confirmed cases of coronavirus infections during the pandemic, including a total of 3,331 deaths. The health commission says 1,033 patients who are asymptomatic, who show no signs of the disease but can still infect others, are currently under isolation, including 18 patients in Hubei.

Source : VOA