SHANGHAI/BEIJING (REUTERS) - Mainland China reported zero locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus for a third day running, while the daily log of infections involving travellers arriving from other countries continued to rise.

Mainland China had 41 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Friday (March 20), the country's National Health Commission said, all imported from abroad. That brought the total number of imported cases to 269.

High in the charts was Beijing, with 14 new imported cases.

Shanghai and six provinces also identified such cases.

That brought the total number of confirmed cases in mainland China to 81,008, the health authority said in a statement on Saturday.

The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China reached 3,255 as of the end of Friday, up by seven from the previous day and all from the central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak in China.