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As China has reported a significant decline in new COVID-19 cases, the number of infections outside the country is soaring. Some skeptics thus doubt whether cases in China are really going down. Here are facts to help dispel the doubt:
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in late January, China has adopted massive quarantining measures and mobilized plenty of resources to contain the virus domestically. Therefore, the new confirmed cases have dropped dramatically and the improvement turns out to be a natural result of China's rapid and vigorous response to the epidemic.
China has remained transparent in tackling the epidemic, sharing data on COVID-19 infections on a daily basis, which have explicitly reflected a downward trend in new cases.
"I didn't see anything that suggest manipulation of numbers. A rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued, and come down faster than would have been expected," said Bruce Aylward, team leader of the China-World Health Organization (WHO) joint mission on the coronavirus, in an interview with The New York Times earlier this month.
At the peak of COVID-19, Hubei's capital city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, added 13,000 more beds in 16 public-facility-turned hospitals for people with mild symptoms. As of March 10, all of the 16 temporary hospitals had been closed as the spike in cases is already over.
By mid-March, many provinces and regions have lowered their emergency responses, a large number of businesses have resumed operations and a majority of the country's entry and exit authorities have re-started service.
Given the fast spread of the virus worldwide, many countries, like China, are also stepping up anti-virus measures, such as locking down cities, sending experts and supplies to hotspots and promoting social distancing. Such kind of measures have bought time for the rest of the world during China's battle against the epidemic.
China's experience in containing the coronavirus's spread could serve as a lesson for other countries now facing the challenge, which demonstrates that the course of the outbreak can be "stopped in its tracks," said WHO Representative in China Gauden Galea in a recent interview with United Nations News.
"That containment was effective and did allow the rest of China to be able to contain the outbreak in a very effective manner. The shape of the epidemic and the small number of cases that were seen outside Hubei are a testimony to the success and the effectiveness," he said.
The Chinese health authorities said Tuesday that it received reports of 21 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection, 20 of which were imported cases, on the Chinese mainland on Monday.
