A total of 99 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infections and 28 deaths were reported on Friday on the Chinese mainland, bringing the two numbers up to 80,651 and 3,070 respectively, the National Health Commission said on Saturday morning.

With the bulk of the new confirmed cases coming from Hubei province, center of the epidemic outbreak, the Chinese mainland outside Hubei only reported 25 daily new infections, 24 of which were imported cases, with 17 in Gansu province and one in Guangdong province, as well as three in Beijing and three in Shanghai.

By the end of Friday, a total of 60 imported cases of novel coronavirus infections had been reported, said the commission.

All the new fatalities were in Hubei province, it said, adding that with another 99 new suspected cases reported Friday, a total of 502 people are still suspected of being infected with the virus.

Also on Friday, 1,678 people were discharged from hospitals after recovery, while the number of severe cases decreased by 248 to 5,489. A total of 55,404 people had been discharged from hospitals after recovery as of Friday midnight.

Health authorities on the mainland have traced 672,458 people with close contact with patients, adding that among them, 4,773 were discharged from medical observation Friday, with 26,730 others still under medical observation.

By the end of Friday, 107 confirmed cases including two deaths had been reported in Hong Kong, 10 confirmed cases in Macao, and 45 in Taiwan including one death. And 51 patients in Hong Kong, 10 in Macao and 12 in Taiwan have been discharged from hospitals after recovery.

Hubei province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, maintained an overall declining trend of the new daily infections, reporting 74 new confirmed cases of viral infections along with 28 new deaths on Friday.

And the latest report brought the number of total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province to 67,666 and total deaths to 2,959.

All the new infections of the province occurred in Wuhan, the provincial capital, with 21 new deaths on Friday. In total, the city has registered 49,871 confirmed cases and 2,349 deaths.

The province also saw 1,502 patients discharged from hospitals after recovery on Friday, bringing the total number of discharged patients in the province to 43,468, it said, adding that Hubei had 301 suspected cases as of Friday midnight.