On Thursday, China reported no new locally transmitted cases of coronavirus—but marked a spike in new cases from overseas—prompting authorities there to enforce strict new quarantine measures on travelers from abroad.
Wuhan, the city where the new coronavirus was first detected, reported no new cases on March 18, 2020, according to Chinese health authorities. Hubei Province has reported no new infections for several days.
According to one epidemiologist in the state-run paper China Daily, cited by Reuters: “If no new case of the coronavirus has been reported for 14 consecutive days in Wuhan following the last reported case, we believe it will be the time when the lockdown can be gradually lifted.”
Beijing had the bulk of new infections, with most new cases reported in people who had traveled from Britain and Spain, according to Reuters.
China has in recent days refocused its efforts on preventing a second wave of the virus transported from overseas, and from Thursday, all travelers entering China from overseas will be put in collective quarantine for 14 days apart from pregnant women and those under 14 and over 70, authorities said.
To date, more than 80,000 people in China have been infected with COVID-19 to date and 3,200 people have died, with the illness spreading to more than 100 countries and infecting 219,000 people around the world, since the outbreak began late last year.
The new coronavirus prompted extreme lockdowns of 11 million people in Wuhan since January that are ongoing, and more widely, some 60 million people in Hubei Province were under lockdowns that are now starting to ease slightly.
Key background: China took extreme measures to try to contain further spread of the virus, after being criticised by citizens for a slow response to the outbreak that began in December last year. At the height of the epidemic in mainland China, thousands of new infections and hundreds of deaths were being reported daily. As the country scrambled to try to contain the virus, reporting methods were switched up, while some disgruntled citizens posted their discontent online, pointed at officials they believe acted too slowly to contain the spread. At least two specialist temporary hospitals were erected within days to treat victims of COVID-19, while images emerging from parts of Hubei Province showed hospitals staggering under the weight of new cases.
The illness, which later took on a much more global profile, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization earlier this month, while the WHO last week said that the center of the outbreak had shifted to Europe, with more cases and deaths being reported across the Continent than the rest of the world combined, apart from China.
