BEIJING, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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NEW YORK -- U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed 350,000 on Saturday evening, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

With the national case count topping 20.4 million, the death toll across the United States rose to 350,186 as of 11:22 p.m. local time (0422 GMT Sunday), according to the CSSE data.

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WELLINGTON -- A total of 19 new COVID-19 cases were reported at the New Zealand border for the last three days, as the country announcing tightened border restrictions on Sunday.

The new cases were all detected in managed isolation while no new case was found in the community, said the Ministry of Health in a statement on Sunday.

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BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina registered 5,240 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, taking the national count to 1,634,834, the health ministry said.

The ministry also reported 56 more deaths from the disease, bringing the nationwide death toll to 43,375.

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SANTIAGO -- Chile reported 3,338 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing total infections to 615,902, the Ministry of Health said on Saturday.

In the last three days, more than 3,000 daily cases of COVID-19 were reported in the country, the highest figures since July.

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BEIJING -- China's National Health Commission said Sunday that it received reports of 24 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Saturday, including eight locally transmitted cases and 16 imported ones.

Four locally transmitted cases were reported in the province of Heilongjiang, two in Liaoning, and one in Beijing and Hebei each, said the commission in its daily report.