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China has decided to send teams of medical experts to Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Saudi Arabia to help the countries fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian says China will never forget the support from African countries during country's most difficult times fighting the pandemic.
He also says China will maintain close cooperation with Saudi Arabia to safeguard the safety and health of peoples of the two countries.
Chinese authorities say over 6,700 asymptomatic COVID-19 patients have been detected on the mainland.
Close to 1,300 of them have been re-categorized as confirmed cases, while over 4,400 cases have been discharged from medical observation.
Around 1,000 asymptomatic cases are still under medical observation.
The last medical team aiding Hubei in the fight against the novel coronavirus left the provincial capital Wuhan on Wednesday.
The team consisting of over 180 medical workers from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital arrived in the city on Jan 26 to assist the Tongji Hospital.
So far, they have treated 109 critically ill patients.
A makeshift hospital built for treating COVID-19 patients in Wuhan has ceased operation.
Leishenshan Hospital was built in 10 days and started to receive patients in early February.
Authorities said the hospital will not be dismantled immediately, but will be kept for a while.
China has launched a major epidemiological survey of the novel coronavirus to evaluate the scale of asymptomatic infections and immunity levels across the population.
Surveys will be conducted in nine provincial-level regions, including hardest-hit Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan.
China has basically blocked the local transmission of the virus, but medical experts have warned that much remains unknown about the coronavirus and that the task of fending off a new surge of cases remains daunting.
China has announced that it will expand the pilot policy of selective tariffs on domestic sales to all comprehensive bonded zones.
It will allow manufacturers operating in bonded warehouses and selling products to the domestic market to declare their products either as imported raw materials or as finished or partly finished products, depending on their assessment of the convenience and the tax pressure on their companies.
Experts suggest the move can help cut the tax burden on enterprises, stabilize foreign trade and expand domestic demand.
The UN chief has reaffirmed support for the World Health Organization.
This comes shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his country is halting its payments to the organization.
Trump made the announcement when he was defending his own handling of the outbreak in the United States.
In his response, Antonio Guterres notes that it is "not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of WHO or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the novel coronavirus."
The International Monetary Fund is predicting that China's economy will likely grow at 1.2 percent this year and rebound strongly to 9.2 percent in 2021.
The organization says the COVID-19 would precipitate global growth into the deepest recession since 1930s but a recovery of 5.8 percent is expected if the pandemic fades.
It also predicts the economy of the United States to contract by 5.9 percent this year, and bounce back to 4.5 percent next year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that western countries' demands that China pay reparations for damages caused by the coronavirus are "unacceptable."
The foreign minister noted that China does not focus solely on domestic developments but has been making every effort to help other countries and share its experience in combating the coronavirus.
The US Navy has removed 126 medical staff members from its hospital ship docked off Los Angeles after seven of them tested positive for COVID-19.
The personnel from the USNS Mercy were taken to a nearby base and remain under quarantine.
Officials say none of the sailors so far needs hospitalization.
The ship left San Diego on March 23 when all were screened before they boarded.
It arrived in Los Angeles four days later to provide relief to the city amid the pandemic by accepting patients from hospitals who were not infected with the virus.
