Advertisement
Coronavirus pandemic
ChinaPeople & Culture

China’s coronavirus controls are starting to pay dividends, but elsewhere in the world infections are rising fast

  • Number of confirmed cases reported in Wuhan on Saturday falls 55 per cent from previous day, National Health Commission says
  • But surges in South Korea, Japan and Iran suggest the epidemic is becoming a pandemic, according to experts

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
China’s National Health Commission says efforts to contain Covid-19 are making “positive progress”. Photo: Reuters
Zhuang Pinghui
A month on from the introduction of strict controls in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, China is cautiously returning to normal operations after seeing a downward trend in the number of new infections.
Advertisement
But that ray of hope could yet be overshadowed as a surge of cases elsewhere in the world, most notably in South Korea, Japan and Iran, threatens to turn an epidemic into a pandemic, experts say.
The spike in new infections outside China coincided with the arrival in Wuhan on Saturday of a team of public health experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), who after earlier visits to Beijing and the provinces of Sichuan and Guangdong now have the task of setting the course for the next stage in handling the deadly outbreak.

Also on Saturday, China’s National Health Commission reported 397 new coronavirus infections – a 55 per cent drop from the 889 reported on Friday – taking the total reported in the country since the outbreak began in December to 76,288. A total of 2,345 have been killed by the virus, of which 109 were reported on Friday.

While the numbers continue to rise, the commission said it had seen a declining trend in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei – the province worst hit by the outbreak – and elsewhere, suggesting that medical efforts were making “positive progress”.

Commission spokesman Mi Feng said that in Wuhan the number of ongoing cases – which excludes fatalities and those who have recovered – fell to 36,680 on Saturday, from 38,020 on Tuesday. For Hubei as a whole the corresponding figure dropped to 10,967 from 13,886, and for all other parts of the country to 5,637 from 9,141.
Advertisement

“The changes indicate that with the continuous strengthening of national prevention and control measures … positive progress has been made in medical treatment and the number of existing cases has seen an accelerated decline,” he said.

loading
Advertisement