China says all coronavirus patients in Wuhan have been discharged

The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 this weekend, and the number of cases is not far from reaching three million, but China — the original epicenter — has continued to report that the pandemic is all but defeated within its borders.

A Chinese government official on Sunday said there are now no coronavirus patients hospitalized in Wuhan, where the virus originated. Wuhan has been showing signs of recovery in recent weeks as lockdown restrictions eased and makeshift hospitals were cleared. As of Saturday, officials said the city had just 12 coronavirus cases, none of them new infections.

Meanwhile, Beijing reported 11 new cases for the entire mainland Sunday. Mi Feng, the spokesman for China's National Health Commission, said the government would continue to guard "against transmissions from the outside and rebounds from within."

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China may well have the pandemic under control now, but many critics believe the official statistics — which show 46,452 total infections and 3,869 deaths in Wuhan and 82,827 cases and 4,632 fatalities in the country overall from the virus since the outbreak began there late last year — are vastly underreported. Read more at The New York Times.