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Beijing recalls vice-premier from outbreak duty as Wuhan marks zero coronavirus patients in hospital
- Sun Chunlan called back to capital after overseeing emergency response at initial epicentre
- City’s last Covid-19 patients discharged from hospital
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Beijing has called for its senior leader to Wuhan, Sun Chunlan, to return to the capital, marking another milestone along the road to normal life for the embattled city.
Vice-premier Sun’s departure from Wuhan comes as all hospitals in the city are now free of Covid-19 patients after four months of all-out disease prevention measures.
China’s National Health Commission announced on Sunday that Wuhan’s last Covid-19 patients had been discharged from the city’s hospitals after months of grappling with the disease.
Wuhan is a city of 11 million people in the central Chinese province of Hubei and the site of the first reported coronavirus infections. The outbreak there has spread into a global pandemic with more than 3 million people infected and more than 200,000 deaths worldwide.
In a report on Monday morning announcing Sun’s departure from Wuhan, state news agency Xinhua said the city had moved toward “normalised” disease and prevention, and away from “exceptional” measures.
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The announcement coincided with the declaration that no new Covid-19 cases were reported in Wuhan or broader Hubei on Sunday. Wuhan has had 50,333 confirmed cases of the disease since it was detected in late December. Of those cases, 3,869 died while 46,464 were discharged, according to the official statistics.
Sun, the only woman on China’s top 25-member Communist Party Politburo, has been the top ranking official in Wuhan since she was sent by the central government to oversee disease control efforts in late January.
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