China on Thursday reported no new domestic transmissions of coronavirus for the first time since the deadly virus surfaced three months ago, achieving a milestone in its battle against the pandemic that has brought the country to a grinding halt and caused an unprecedented global health crisis.
While no domestic cases were reported, Wuhan, where the outbreak began, still has 6,636 people in hospitals including 1,809 in severe condition and 465 in critical condition, local health commission said.
China now faces a greater threat of infections of imported cases, which jumped by 34 on Wednesday with large number of Chinese and foreigners arriving back to join their duties.
While zero domestic cases is a major milestone, which heralds the end of domestically generated Covid-19 cases, China, however, continues to grapple with mounting death toll which climbed to 3,245 on Wednesday with eight more fatalities.
The overall confirmed cases on the mainland reached 80,928 by the end of Wednesday highlighting the scale of the cases China dealt with, making coronavirus perhaps the worst health tragedy in the country's history.
The total included 3,245 people who died of the disease 7,263 patients still undergoing treatment and 70,420 patients discharged after recovery.
More From This Section
By the end of Wednesday, 192 confirmed cases including four deaths had been reported in Hong Kong, 15 confirmed cases in the Macao and 100 in Taiwan including one death, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said.
Over 42,000 medical personnel including hundreds of doctors and nurses drawn from different parts of the country and the military were deployed in Wuhan and Hubei to bring the virus under control.
Over 3,000 medical staff were reported to have contracted the virus with 10 deaths.
Over 56 million people belonging to area continued to languish in lockdown situation with a ban on all public and private transportation since January 23.
As the virus abated, China began to limp back to normalcy.
While the economic cost of the outbreak for China is stated to be in hundreds of billions of dollars, the political cost especially for the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping is yet to unravel as the country is still engrossed in fighting the virulent virus.
While China's top-down approach locking Wuhan and Hubei provinces followed by massive mobilisation of medical staff and materials won praise globally, critics question why the government has not acted when the disease first surfaced in December last year.
"The Chinese leadership's credibility has taken a heavy beating at home and abroad because of its initial bungled handling of the outbreak, reminding many of the government's poor early response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2002," Wang Xiangwei, a Beijing based columnist wrote in South China Morning Post of Hong Kong recently.
"This calls for the formation of an authoritative, broadly represented special commission that should include not only officials but also representatives of the victims' families, medical professionals and other people involved," Wang said.
The coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan in December as a new pathogen suspected to have emanated from the local live animal market. The surging cases of the virus began surfacing with local doctors identifying it as something similar to SARS virus which caused major devastation in China and Hong Kong in 2003.
Li Wenliang, a 29-year-old whistle-blower who later died of the coronavirus was warned by local police when he first reported about the virus on social media on December 31 last year.
Before its traits were fully understood, the virus had cut a swath of infections among Wuhan's unsuspecting public jumping from the transportation hub to other parts of China during the largest seasonal human migration coinciding with the Chinese New Year in the third week of January.
According to the mayor of Wuhan five million people from Wuhan had left for holiday destinations by the time the government began initiating control measures.
The pandemic has now spread to 157 countries and territories, killing more over 9,000 people globally.
The Chinese leadership has described the COVID-19 outbreak as the most difficult to contain since the founding of the People's Republic of China and "a big test" for the country and Xi himself acknowledged shortcoming in CPC meetings.
"We still have insufficient knowledge of the novel coronavirus. What we already know is it's a very cunning virus with a long incubation period," Wang Daowen, a cardiologist at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, told state-run Xinhua news agency.
"We still found the virus from the anus, if not from the lungs, of one patient after he was hospitalised for 50 days," said Wang, who was among the first medical experts joining the treatment of COVID-19. "Usually, a virus should vanish from one's body in two weeks."
Behind the downward trends were a raft of strong measures taken by the Chinese government, including cancelling mass events, closing scenic attractions, suspending long-distance buses and asking hundreds of millions of Chinese to stay indoors to minimize infection risks.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
