China has opened a temporary flight from Milan, Italy to its eastern city of Wenzhou to bring home overseas Chinese in Italy as the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread.

On Monday, an Air China jet carrying 125 passengers, many of whom are children and the elderly, flew to Wenzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The relevant departments have conducted health checks on all the passengers and adopted medical inspections and centralized observations.

According to Italy's civil protection department, the coronavirus epidemic has claimed at least 368 lives in locked down Italy on Sunday.