China registered no new cases of people infected with the new coronavirus (Covid-19) cases in the 24-hour period ending on Saturday, for the first time since it started publishing figures on the pandemic in January.
The spread of the virus, which first appeared in Wuhan in late 2019, has been practically stopped in China, where close to 83,000 cases of infection, 4,634 of them fatal, have been registered so far.
Worldwide, more than five million people have been infected and around 330,000 have died.
“We have obtained a major strategic success in our response to Covid-19,” Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said on Friday at the opening of the Plenary Session of the country’s Popular National Assembly.
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Speaking before some 3,000 members of the assembly, he stressed, however, the immensity of the task that remained.
The Trump administration in the United States accuses the Chinese authorities of being late in alerting the world to the pandemic and of hiding its extent.
Beijing vigorously denies the U.S. accusations, arguing that it has always shared information on the epidemic in real time with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other countries.
The Brussels Times