Central China's Hubei Province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, reported 14,840 new infection cases (including 13,332 clinical cases diagnosed via CT scan) on Wednesday, bringing to a total of 48,206 confirmed cases in the province.

The Hubei Provincial Health Commission said the 13,332 clinically diagnosed cases, which have been seen as confirmed cases from Thursday, were suspected cases and were diagnosed with expanded testing methods including CT scans.  

Clinically diagnosed cases are unique to Hubei statistically. The inclusion of those cases drives the surge in the number of new confirmed cases.

Any suspected cases with pneumonia-related CT scan results are counted as clinically diagnosed cases, according to the latest version of the diagnosis and treatment scheme released by the National Health Commission.

The provincial health commission said the diagnosis criteria revision has been made to give those who have been clinically diagnosed the timely standard treatment of confirmed cases to further raise the treatment success rate.

On Wednesday, 242 more deaths were reported in Hubei.

As of Wednesday, a total of 1,310 people have died of the virus in Hubei, and 3,441 patients were discharged from hospitals. 

(With input from Xinhua)