China disposes of 182,000 tonnes of medical waste amid COVID-19 outbreak

As of March 21, China's medical waste disposal capacity had reached 6,066.8 tonnes per day, up from 4,902.8 tonnes each day before the epidemic outbreak, the MEE said in a statement.

The disposal capacity of Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, rose from 180 tonnes per day before the outbreak to 667.4 tonnes, according to the statement.

Currently, the treatment of medical sewage in China is steady and orderly, with disinfection measures being strictly implemented, the ministry said.

Environmental authorities carried out 21,399 surveys on the country's drinking water sources and did not find any impact from the epidemic on the quality of the water sources.

The MEE also logged improvement in air quality for 337 cities it has monitored, with the share of good air quality days at 86.3 percent from January 20 to March 21, up 8.8 percentage points year on year.

* Chinese health authority received reports of 78 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland on Monday, of which 74 were imported from abroad.

* Of the imported cases, 31 were reported in Beijing, 14 in Guangdong, nine in Shanghai, five in Fujian, four in Tianjin, three in Jiangsu, two in Zhejiang and Sichuan respectively. Shanxi, Liaoning, Shandong and Chongqing each reported one case. By the end of Monday (March 23), 427 imported cases had been reported.

* On Monday, seven deaths and 35 new suspected cases were reported on the mainland with all the deaths in Hubei Province.

* The overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 81,171 by the end of Monday, including 4,735 patients who were still being treated, 73,159 patients who had been discharged after recovery, and 3,277 people who died of the disease.

* One new confirmed COVID-19 case was reported Monday in Wuhan after the former hardest-hit city had seen zero new reports for five consecutive days.