China has been criticized domestically and abroad as being initially slow to react to the epidemic, which first broke out on a large scale in Wuhan. The virus has since spread across the world, infecting almost 4 million people and killing almost a quarter-million from the COVID-19 disease it causes.

“This coronavirus epidemic is a big test of our country’s governance and governing ability, and it exposed the weak links in how we address the major epidemic and public health systems,” Li Bin, vice-minister of the China National Health Commission, told reporters.

The commission intends to build a “centralized and efficient” chain of command and reform, and modernize the disease prevention and control system, he said, Reuters reported.

The commission also aims to make better use of big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to better analyze the disease, trace the virus, and distribute resources.

He said the commission plans to step up research on core technology, improve medical insurance, and better ensure the availability of emergency materials.

China has not seen any new deaths from coronavirus for 24 days.

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But the country remains on alert for a second possible wave, with Beijing reimposing some of its lockdown measures and other cities seeing new quarantines, the Daily Mail reported.

Wuhan and the province of Hubei were put in lockdown near the end of January, with roads sealed, trains and planes canceled, and residents unable to move freely for more than two months.

The city is still testing residents regularly despite relaxing most restrictions.

The city had reported 46,452 cases, 56 percent of the national total. It saw 3,869 fatalities, or 84 percent of China’s reported, yet disputed, total.

National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng announced: ‘The number of new coronavirus patients in Wuhan was at zero, thanks to the joint efforts of Wuhan and medical staff from around the country.’

The focus has since shifted to the northeast border province of Heilongjiang, which has seen large numbers of imported coronavirus cases entering from Russia.

The border town of Suifenhe, with its 70,000 population, went into lockdown at the start of the month while nearby Harbin, home to 10 million, has become the new battlefront.

And 1,000 miles away in Beijing, the authorities opened gyms and swimming pools only to quickly close them again to prevent any spread.

The district of Chaoyang is home to many ex-pats and international offices and was put down into quarantine measures after travelers began to return, infecting Beijing locals who had stayed at home.

There were no signs of any worry yesterday as people packed into a flower market in Suzhou city, in east China’s Jiangsu province.

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Mapping a “network” of coronavirus genomes and tracing mutations over time, a team of researchers led by Cambridge University determined the first COVID-19 outbreak may have come as early as September in a region south of Wuhan, noting the pathogen could’ve been carried by humans well before it mutated into a more lethal form, RT reported.

“The virus may have mutated into its final ‘human-efficient’ form months ago, but stayed inside a bat or other animal or even human for several months without infecting other individuals,” said Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster, who took part in the ongoing yet to be peer-reviewed research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Then, it started infecting and spreading among humans between September 13 and December 7, generating the network we present in (the study).

Though the virus is thought to have transmitted from bats to another host animal – pangolins are a popular candidate – and finally to humans, the new findings could overturn prevailing ideas as to precisely how, when and where it made the interspecies leap. Initial theories posited the jump to humans took place at a wet market in Wuhan, but the Cambridge study has called that into question, suggesting COVID-19 might have originated south of the central-Chinese city.

The original spread started more likely in southern China than in Wuhan, he said.

Any solid conclusions, however, could only be made after analyzing more bats and other potential host animals, as well as tissue samples in Chinese hospitals, Forster cautioned.

As questions swirl about the origins of the pandemic, a number of controversial theories have gained prominence recently, with several major US media outlets running stories this week suggesting the virus may have escaped a maximum-security virology lab in Wuhan.

Though US President Donald Trump has yet to endorse the claim outright, he said the White House is currently looking into the idea, all the while blaming Beijing for the global health crisis. Trump has repeatedly accused the country of a “cover-up” in the early stages of its outbreak, insisting the World Health Organization conspired to help Chinese officials conceal information.

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Iran’s Ambassador to China Mohammad Keshavarzzadeh announced in a post on his Twitter account on Saturday that the new consignments of Chinese medical supplies were going to be shipped to Tehran with two flights from Beijing that night.

The envoy said the Chinese government and people have so far sent 28 planeloads of aid shipment to Iran from the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

According to Keshavarzzadeh, since the outbreak of coronavirus epidemic, China has provided Iran with more than 10 million masks, 500,000 COVID-19 diagnostic test kits, 300,000 surgery, and isolation gowns, 2.2 million gloves, 350 ventilators, 500 prefabricated hospital rooms, and a broad range of medicines and medical equipment.

The ambassador also noted that Jack Ma, Chinese business magnate and co-founder of Alibaba Group, has donated one million masks to Iran.

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Photographs published by CCTV show medical personnel who worked at one of the facilities celebrating and waving Chinese flags following the closure of their hospital, RT reported.

The Twitter page of CCTV wrote: “The temporary hospital of Jianghan in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, which was converted from Wuhan International Conference and Exhibition Center, closed on Monday afternoon. #CombatCoronavirus #UnityIsStrength”

The impromptu hospitals closed their doors on the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a visit to Wuhan, the first time since the coronavirus epidemic began more than two months ago. Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province were hit hardest by the illness, but infection rates have dropped significantly in recent days.

Some of the medical facilities were constructed in record time, with one hospital in Wuhan going up in under two weeks.

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Monday’s China death toll was a jump on the 97 deaths as reports say on Sunday.

The commission also confirmed a total of 409 new cases in China, with all but 11 in Hubei.

Multiple provinces have reported zero new infections for several days in a row, even as the situation continues to worsen within Hubei and outside of China.

Only one death was reported outside of Hubei on Monday, in Hainan province, where the official Xinhua news agency said a 55-year-old doctor had died, AFP reported.

The coronavirus has spread to more than 25 countries and is causing mounting alarm due to new pockets of outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Italy reported a third death while cases spiked, and authorities suspended football games while the Venice Carnival was cut short.

Iran’s confirmed death toll rose to eight, prompting travel bans from neighboring countries.

China’s numbers of daily new infections are well down from the outbreak’s early height.

But the country’s authorities have sowed confusion about the data by repeatedly changing their counting methods.

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Reports on Tuesday showed that Iranian health minister Saeid Namaki personally visited a hotel located in the vicinity of Tehran where the 57 students had been quarantined to ensure they all tested negative for coronavirus.

The students had been flown to Iran in early February from Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei. The evacuation came after Chinese authorities reported growing cases of coronavirus in the region that had led to hundreds of deaths.

The toll from the virus, which is currently called COVID-19, has reached over 1,800 people including fatalities in other countries. Nearly 80,000 people, mostly in Hubei, are being treated for the highly-contagious disease.

A deputy Iranian health minister said that all 57 students quarantined in the hotel in Shahriar, a city to the southwest of Tehran, had undergone intensive tests and care procedures during the days in the facility.

Authorities issued certificates for the students allowing them to prove that they are in good health and would pose no threat to others.

Authorities in Shahriar said they were grateful to the local people for tolerating the situation.

That came after reports showed some residents were angered by the decision to hold the students in the city, saying the disease could spread to people living around the hotel.

Students leaving the quarantine were also pleased by Iran’s quick response to the case, saying the government had shown a great deal of support for them both in China and inside Iran.

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The total of confirmed infections across mainland China was now 66,492 after 2,641 new cases were confirmed, as of Friday, the National Health Commission said.

The death toll rose by 143 to 1,523, it said, with most of the new deaths in central Hubei province and in particular the provincial capital of Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the outbreak began in December.

National Health Commission official Liang Wannian told a news conference the government would continue to try to contain the spread of virus in Wuhan, which has been under virtual lockdown for three weeks.

The commission was focused on lowering the fatality rate and reducing the infection rate, Liang said.

The number of deaths in Hubei rose by 139 as of Friday, 107 of those in Wuhan. A total of 1,123 people in Wuhan have now died from the coronavirus.

China is struggling to get the world’s second-largest economy going after the Lunar New Year holiday, which was extended by 10 days to help contain the virus.

China would maintain a prudent monetary policy and help companies resume production as soon as possible, the vice governor of the central bank told a news conference.

The official Beijing Daily newspaper said people failing to obey government orders to quarantine themselves on return from the holidays would be punished. But it was not immediately clear how that would be enforced, or whether the restrictions would apply to non-residents or foreigners arriving from abroad.

“From now on, all those who have returned to Beijing should stay at home or submit to group observation for 14 days after arriving,” Beijing’s virus prevention working group said in a notice cited by the Beijing Daily.

“Those who refuse to accept home or centralized observation and other prevention and control measures will be held accountable under the law,” it said.

The number of trade fairs, sports events and industry conferences in China and overseas that have been affected by the spread of the virus continued to increase.

International Business Machines Corp said on Friday it had canceled its participation in the RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco at the end of February due to coronavirus-related concerns.

Earlier, Facebook Inc said it had canceled its global marketing summit scheduled for next month, also in San Francisco, over worry about the same risks.

The Mobile World Congress (MWC), the annual telecoms industry gathering in Barcelona, was also canceled after a mass exodus by exhibitors linked to the coronavirus.

Organizers of next week’s gymnastics World Cup in Melbourne said on Saturday the entire Chinese team had pulled out due to travel restrictions.

A top Chinese official, in an interview with Reuters, acknowledged that the coronavirus was a huge challenge, but defended the government’s management of the epidemic and lashed out at the “overreaction” of some countries.

State Councilor Wang Yi, who also serves as China’s foreign minister, said China had taken decisive measures to fight the epidemic, many going beyond international health regulations and World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.

“Through our efforts the epidemic is overall under control,” he said.

Outside mainland China, there have been nearly 450 cases in some 24 countries and territories, and three deaths.

Egypt confirmed its first coronavirus case on Friday, saying the affected person was a foreigner who had been put into isolation in hospital.

Three people have died outside mainland China – one in Japan, one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.

The virus is killing about 2% of those infected, but has spread faster than other respiratory viruses that emerged this century.

A WHO-led joint mission with China will start its outbreak investigation work this weekend, focusing on how the new coronavirus is spreading and its severity, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The United States will evacuate some Americans from a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, being held in quarantine in Japan, which has become the biggest cluster of coronavirus infections outside China, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The ship, owned by Carnival Corp, has been quarantined since arriving in Yokohama, Japan, on Feb. 3, with 3,500 passengers and crew on board, of whom 218 have tested positive for the infection.

Alarm was raised about the ship after a man who disembarked in Hong Kong was diagnosed with the virus. Those who have tested positive have been taken off the ship to hospital.

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