The last patient in Wuhan with severe COVID-19 has been cured, a health official has declared. The now-global disease was first detected in the Chinese city.
The patient, who was the last person in Wuhan and the whole of Hubei Province to experience difficulty overcoming the virus, was released from the hospital on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported, citing a spokesman for the Chinese National Health Commission.
By Friday morning, there were 47 confirmed COVID-19 patients in the province, including the sole remaining serious patient. No new confirmed or suspected cases have been reported in the province in some three weeks. The number of serious cases in mainland China dropped under 60 as of Thursday midnight, according to official data.
The Chinese city, where the coronavirus pandemic started last year, endured a strict lockdown that lasted over 10 weeks between January and April. It didn’t stop the virus from going global and killing over 190,000 but has apparently managed to keep the infection in check in China itself.
Beijing has reported a total of 82,804 COVID-19 cases on the mainland with the death toll standing at 4,632. The Chinese statistic was greeted with skepticism by some Western politicians, like US President Donald Trump, who claims the Chinese government covered up the scale of the epidemic. China denies the allegations and sees such criticism as an attempt to shift the blame for the damage done by the virus in other countries.