While the majority of new cases in China in recent months have involved those who tested positive after returning home from abroad, at the end of last week local authorities reported new cases with no recent travel history outside of Beijing after two months of no infections in the capital, reports Efe news.

 

Parts of the city were locked down on Saturday.

 

The novel coronavirus is believed to have originated at a market that sold wildlife in Hubei province's capital city of Wuhan last December.

 

Thirty-nine of the new cases were locally transmitted - with 36 of them in Beijing as a result of an outbreak in the capital's main Xinfadi food wholesale market - while 10 were imported.

 

Beijing authorities on Monday said that 79 people were receiving treatment in the capital, while seven asymptomatic cases were under observation following the detection of the fresh outbreak in the market.

 

The other three locally transmitted cases � aside from the 36 detected in the capital � were reported in the northern province of Hebei, near Beijing.

 

The National Health Commission did not report any deaths due to COVID-19 in the country and added there was one critically ill patient, while one patient was discharged and 392 close contacts were discharged from medical observation.

 

The total active cases in China stands at 177 � two of them in critical condition � and some 83,181 cases have been reported in the country along with 4,634 deaths since the novel coronavirus outbreak.

 

The fresh asymptomatic cases � which China does not count as confirmed cases � stood at 18, 11 of them imported.

 

So far, there are 112 such cases under medical observation, of which 62 are people who came from outside the country.