China reported no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Monday for the first time since July, according to its National Health Commission (NHC), as authorities double down on the country's stringent zero-COVID approach.
China has been grapping with the spread of it highly contagious Delta variant since July 20, when a cluster of COVID-19 infections was detected among airport cleaning staff in the eastern city of Nanjing.
Since then, it has spiraled into the worst outbreak China has seen since 2020, spreading to more than half of the country's 31 provinces and infecting more than 1,200 people. The surging cases driven by Delta were seen as the biggest challenges yet to China's uncompromising zero-tolerance virus policy.
Local authority responded by placing tens of millions of residents under strict lockdown, rolling out massive testing and tracing campaigns and restricting domestic travels.
The strict measures appeared to be working since daily infections have fallen steadily over the past week into single digits, down from more than 100 from their peak two week ago.
And on Monday, the country reported 21 imported cases and zero locally transmitted symptomatic infections the first time no local cases have been recorded since July 16. It also reported 16 asymptomatic cases, all of which were imported too, according to the NHC.
China keeps a separate count of symptomatic and asymptomatic cases and does not include asymptomatic carriers of the virus in the official tally of confirmed cases.