According to Zhang Boli, president of the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese people can expect to walk around in public without face masks toward the end of April, Asia Times reported.
However, those in the Hubei province, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, may need to be on lockdown for several more months past April.
The majority of deaths from the virus in China and in the world have occurred in Hubei. Out of the 3,048 deaths caused by the virus worldwide, 2,803 have been in Hubei, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Zhong Nanshan, China’s top respiratory disease expert who leads a team at China’s National Health Commission, also announced during a news conference in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou Thursday that the country is expected to gain “basic control” of the virus by the end of April. Zhong predicted that the epidemic would peak in mid to late February.
"We are confident that we will have basic control by the end of April,” Zhong said, according to Japanese newspaper Kyodo News, also noting that China recorded its lowest death toll in nearly a month on Wednesday. There were 29 deaths in China as a result of the coronavirus Wednesday, compared to 52 deaths just a day prior on Tuesday, according to China’s National Health Commission.
Zhong also called for more international cooperation to contain the virus.
“It is a disease of humans, not of a country. We need more international cooperation … South Korea, Iran and Italy are facing a quick increase in [the] number of new confirmed cases. The measures China has taken may give them some inspiration,” Zhong is quoted as saying by The Week during the conference.
The Chinese National Health Commission has also revealed that more than 44,000 patients have been cured of the virus, claiming that the recovery rate is more than 50%.
Despite the decrease in daily fatalities, health authorities in the southern Chinese province Guangdong have said that 14% of coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals after recovering test positive for the virus again, Kyodo News reported.
There are almost 90,000 cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and more than 3,000 deaths have resulted from the disease.
