The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2nd R) attends a daily briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday. Photo: Xinhua

A team consisting of Chinese and World Health Organization (WHO) experts conducted an inspection tour of Central China's Hubei Province, ground zero of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) outbreak, and visited some local hospitals and centers for disease control and prevention (CDC), prompting analysts to predict that WHO will soon give a technical briefing based on current situation and progress. 

After completing investigations in Beijing, South China's Guangdong Province and Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the joint expert team visited Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, during the weekend, according to China's  National Health Commission (NHC). The team visited the Tongji Hospital (Guanggu Park area), the makeshift hospital in Wuhan Sports Center, and held discussions with provincial and city-level CDCs on epidemic prevention and control work, as well as medical treatment. 

The team, led by Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward, is expected to give a technical briefing on the current epidemic control work, taking into account the visible progress China has made after weeks of city lockdown and quarantine measures, according to analysts. 

Aylward is scheduled to give a media briefing on this visit in Beijing on Monday evening. 

"I guess in this report, the WHO is likely to mention that as the epidemic has not even come close to ending, cautious measures should be taken in resuming economic activities, and unnecessary public gatherings should be avoided," Chen Xi, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health at Yale University, told the Global Times on Monday. 

Medical workers inject medicine for Li Zuofan (R) at an intensive care ward of the novel coronavirus infection cases at a branch of Tongji Hospital affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Feb. 18, 2020.

Zero new infections were reported in 24 of the 31 provinces, municipalities and regions in the Chinese mainland on Sunday, and outside Hubei, a total of 11 new cases were reported, according to official data from the NHC on Monday. Six provinces had lowered their emergency response measures from the highest to level 2 or level 3 following palpable progress in epidemic control work outside the epicenter. 

Wuhan was an unavoidable stop in the itinerary of the WHO-led expert team, as China has attached great importance to information transparency during the epidemic, and experts are expected to learn more about basic research on the virus, clinical treatment, and epidemic control in Wuhan and the other regions they previously visited, according to analysts. 

Some analysts also expected the WHO's upcoming briefing to touch on problems regarding a secondary health crisis, including treatment of other diseases delayed as a result of the outbreak.

 "With the release of more medical resources and the launch of more makeshift hospitals, those problems have to be tackled to lower the death rate," Chen said, referring to death rates of both the epidemic and the secondary health crisis. 

Wuhan has now established 13 Fangcang makeshift hospitals, providing 13,348 beds, which have partly helped ease the strain on supply of medical services. Local authorities are now planning to build  19 more makeshift hospitals, which could bring the total number of beds available to 30,000. 

However, the experience of building makeshift hospitals may not be easily copied in other countries and regions, as infection numbers have been surging in countries such as South Korea and Japan, Chen noted. "Closures of business and schools are the measures that need to be taken immediately, and that is what some countries are doing," he said.