Chinese health authorities on Saturday said 3070 people had died from the coronavirus outbreak while, for the first time in several weeks, less than 100 new infections were reported from across the country.
The epidemic is showing signs of stabilising in China, especially outside the worst-hit Hubei provinces as it rages globally.
Chinese authorities continued to strictly screen international airports for infected people coming in or returning to China from abroad.
China’s national health commission (NHC) said Saturday 99 cases were reported from the mainland with 74 of those from Wuhan, Hubei province’s capital, from where the epidemic started in December.
The commission says it is the first time since January 20 that less than 100 people have been found to be infected in one day.
This is the second day that no new case of covid-19 was reported from other parts of the central Chinese province.
All the 28 new deaths on Friday were reported from Hubei, with 21 in Wuhan, bringing the death toll to 3070.
There are now 80,651 infections in mainland China.
According to Wuhan’s local officials, about one-third of residential communities in the city have had no newly confirmed cases in the past two weeks as of Thursday.
Outside Hubei, nearly all new infections, or at least 24 of those, were found among people coming in to China.
As of Friday, the mainland had reported 60 such cases.
Four people who had travelled to Italy tested positive in Beijing, while in Shanghai a person who had been studying in Iran was found to be infected.
Authorities said 11 out of 311 people who arrived in Gansu Province from Iran on chartered flights between Monday and Thursday also tested positive.
Local governments in Beijing, Shanghai and in the southern province of Guangdong are asking that people arriving from Japan, South Korea, Italy or Iran quarantine themselves at home or elsewhere for 14 days.
Meanwhile, a senior WHO official has said that there is no evidence right now suggesting covid-19 will disappear in summer.
“We do not know yet what the activity or behavior of the virus will be in different climatic conditions. We have to assume the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program said.
Ryan urged countries to fight the new virus decisively at the current stage and called on countries and societies to avoid “blame culture” and to do all the things needed to save lives.
Meanwhile, a new study has found that mesenchymal (cells that grow into tissues blood and cartilage) stem cell (MSC) therapy could be effective in treating COVID-19, according to research published in the peer-reviewed journal Aging and Disease, state media reported.
The study, conducted by a research team led by Robert Chunhua Zhao, a professor from Shanghai University and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, assessed clinical outcomes of seven patients treated with MSC therapy at Beijing You’an Hospital for 14 days.
“They found that MSCs could greatly optimise the functional outcomes of the patients without observed adverse effects,” the china.org reported.
“The pulmonary function and symptoms of all patients with covid-19 pneumonia were significantly improved two days after MSCs transplantation. Among them, two moderate and one severe patient were recovered and discharged in 10 days after treatment,” the authors wrote in the research paper.
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