China no longer has serious coronavirus patients

Beijing : There is no serious COVID-19 patient left in China, the health authorities said on Sunday, even as the country reported six new cases of the novel coronavirus, three more than a day ago.

This is for the first time since the pandemic originated in the city of Wuhan last December that the Chinese health authorities have claimed that there were no serious patients of the coronavirus infection now, reports Efe news.

The National Health Commission said the last COVID-19 patient in a serious condition was out of danger now even as there were still 70 active infected patients left in mainland China.

The Commission said as of Saturday midnight, six new infections were detected and one of them was due to local transmission on the southern island of Hainan.

The other five new positive cases were all travellers from abroad, the so-called "imported" cases.

The Commission did not announce new COVID-19 deaths as such the figure remains at 4,634, among the 83,036 infected people officially diagnosed in China since the start of the pandemic.

Of these, 78,332 have recovered and were discharged from hospitals.

The country has so far monitored 746,744 close contacts of the infected patients, of which 3,389 are still under observation.

The Commission also confirmed five new asymptomatic cases compared with two the previous day.

Since March, China has been able to drastically reduce the number of fresh COVID-19 infections at the community level, following strict preventive measures and restriction on movement to contain the epidemic.

However, since then, there have been reports of a few "imported" cases, most of them concerning people who returned to China from other countries that have been severely affected by the coronavirus.

Several preventive measures and movement restrictions have been relaxed in recent weeks, although the authorities have maintained a ban on the entry of foreigners, including those residing in China, with a few exceptions.