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Updated: Mar 09, 2020 18:29 IST

China has shut down 14 of the 16 makeshift hospitals it had opened in a rush to receive COVID-19 patients at the epidemic epicentre Wuhan as the number of new infections continued to fall rapidly, the national health commission (NHC) said on Monday.

Mainland China, outside the worst-hit central Chinese Hubei province, reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for the second day on Monday: Four imported cases from Iran were reported in the province of Gansu.

However, Chen Yixin, secretary-general of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Politics and Law Commission said no one should let their guard down.

“We must stay cautious, not be blindly optimistic and must not have war-weariness,” Chen said, adding: “We should not reduce the vigilance against the epidemic and the requirements of prevention and control.”

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The number of fresh cases was 40, the NHC said on Monday, the lowest since it started publishing the data from the third week of January.

The 22 new deaths, all in Hubei except one, pushed the toll to 3,119 with more than 80,700 people now infected in mainland China.

According to official media, the temporary hospital of Jianghan, which was converted from the existing international exhibition center of Wuhan, closed Monday afternoon, bringing the number of closed temporary hospitals to 14.

Wuhan converted public venues such as exhibition centers and gymnasiums into 16 temporary hospitals to treat patients with mild symptoms and isolate the source of infection,

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“Some 12,000 patients were treated in these temporary hospitals,” official news agency, Xinhua reported Monday.

One of the temporary hospitals built at the site of Wuhan Living Room Exhibition Center, was the largest among the first batch of makeshift hospitals built to treat more patients in the city.

Led by the medical team from the city’s Zhongnan Hospital, the hospital offered 1,461 beds and was supported by local medical teams as well as medics from 15 medical teams from all over the country.

The other two temporary hospitals remaining in operation are expected to close Tuesday.

The medical staff in these hospitals will be on standby, authorities said.

The provincial health commission said earlier that Hubei will gradually shut down temporary hospitals and cut the number of hospitals designated for the disease “while maintaining strict prevention and control measures”.