Residents get inoculated against the COVID-19 virus at a vaccination site in a stadium in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, Aug. 2, 2021. The city of Nanjing has been organizing vaccinations from Sunday for those who are qualified to get the second shot in low-risk areas amid resurgence of COVID-19 infections.Photo:Xinhua

Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu Province, which has been hit the hardest by a new wave of COVID-19 since mid-July, has seen a flattening curve of daily infections, as the city reported single-digit case numbers for three consecutive days. 

Experts said that the trend indicates that Nanjing's outbreak has been brought under control, and the preventive measures have proven effective even in the face of the more vicious Delta variant. 

Nanjing reported four new confirmed local cases on Wednesday, bringing the total infection number to 227 since the epidemic broke out from the local airport on July 20, the city's health commission said at Thursday's media briefing. 

On Tuesday and Monday, the city reported five and three new cases, respectively. 

A number of areas in two blocks of Nanjing have downgraded their risk levels from medium to low, the commission said. 

Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times on Thursday that the trend suggests the Nanjing outbreak has been brought under control. 

"With the timely and accurate measures to cut off the transmission chain, contain the virus spread, and vaccination, we are confident to curb the COVID-19 spike even in the face of the Delta variant," Wang noted.  

The Nanjing Public Health Medical Center has built a new oxygen supply facility, realizing full-flow high-pressure oxygen supply in the ICU ward, and further improving the ability to treat patients with COVID-19.

Nanjing's neighboring city of Yangzhou, which has also become an "eye of the storm" in the latest coronavirus flare-up, is still struggling with daily surges. The city registered 36 new cases on Wednesday, bringing the total local case number to 162. 

It is worth noting that of the 162 cases, 9 suffered severe symptoms while 2 are in critical conditions.

To fight the epidemic effectively, Jiangyin, another city in Jiangsu, has completed the functional examination of the Huoyan lab, or the "piercing eyes" lab, which only took a day to build. It is specially built to increase nucleic acid testing capacity, with a daily throughput reaching 30,000 tubes of samples, China Central Television reported. 

Some 87 highway entrances and exits have been closed in Jiangsu, as well as 31 national and provincial highways. 

The province registered 40 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, four of which were from Nanjing and 36 others from Yangzhou. There are currently 396 confirmed locally-transmitted patients being treated at local designated hospitals.