At long last: China reports zero new coronavirus deaths for FIRST TIME as outbreak continues to subside

Beijing has reported zero new fatalities from Covid-19, the country’s National Health Commission said in a statement, a first for China since it was wracked with a major coronavirus outbreak late last year.

The Health Commission said it recorded no new fatalities and confirmed only 32 cases of the illness on Monday, all imported from abroad, a further sign that the country’s outbreak – previously the largest in the world – is continuing to wane.

Seeing over 82,000 cases in total since last December, largely clustered in Hubei Province and its capital city of Wuhan, months of aggressive containment measures have appeared to pay off, with daily death and disease tallies consistently falling throughout March and the beginning of April, according to official data. As the numbers declined, China has gradually reopened its worst-affected cities, lifting sweeping travel restrictions on Wuhan – where the outbreak began – last month. The final remaining travel ban on the city will be removed on Wednesday, allowing outbound traffic to resume after 76 days on lockdown.

A greater number of cases imported from overseas has prompted Beijing to close its borders to foreign arrivals, wary of a second wave of outbreaks, as Europe becomes a major hotbed for the lethal virus. Italy, Spain and Germany have each crossed the grim milestone of 100,000 confirmed cases, while France is not far behind with over 98,000. The US now leads the world in infections, however, counting more than 366,000 and nearly 11,000 deaths as the virus grips all 50 states.

After reversing the tide of its own coronavirus outbreak, Beijing has extended a hand to other stricken nations, shipping out over $1 billion in medical supplies, including nearly four billion masks to date, according to the Global Times.

The pandemic reached one million cases worldwide last week, soaring to over 1.3 million in the days since across more than 180 nations. Though many major hotspots around the globe have yet to hit their peak, Italy – which has the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality rate – has started to see its own epidemic subside, reporting falling daily cases over the last week. 

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