Cherry trees in Wuhan University are currently in full bloom. Photo: VCG

After two months of arduous efforts, it seems that China finally welcomes a turning point in the fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic as no new confirmed cases were reported either from Central China's Hubei Province, the area hit hardest by the outbreak, or from other provinces of the mainland on Wednesday. 

Hubei also reported 795 new recoveries on Wednesday, including 733 in its capital city Wuhan.

The Chinese mainland reported 34 new cases, all of which were imported from overseas, bringing the total number of imported cases to 189.

On Wednesday, Wuhan, the city where the first COVID-19 case was reported and which had a lockdown imposed since January 23, announced a further easing of restrictions by allowing residents from non-affected residential communities to conduct non-clustered individual activities inside their community in batches and at different time periods. Unaffected villages could also begin their agricultural production in an orderly manner.

Besides, medical teams dispatched from across the country to support Hubei will depart the former battleground starting from Tuesday. At least 3,700 medical workers have already returned to their home cities, reported the cnr.cn.

Although the epidemic situation is getting better, medical treatment remains an arduous task, as there are more than 6,600 patients still in hospital, including 1,800 in critical conditions, and it will take a long time for Hubei to clear all these cases, said Yang Yunyan, a deputy governor of Hubei, at Thursday's press conference.

Yang noted that the risk of infection within communities and hospitals still exists, as a total of six new cases in Wuhan were confirmed via outpatient diagnosis in the past five days from Friday to Tuesday.

Medical experts also warned of possible blind spots in communities in Wuhan and suggested that each case must be treated as an important incident and epidemiological investigations should be conducted to eliminate new infections.