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Beijing, Mar 12: The number of fresh infections at the epicentre of China's coronavirus epidemic dropped to a new low on Thursday but the country imported more cases from abroad.

Another 11 people died, the lowest daily increase since late January, bringing the toll in China to 3,169 deaths, according to the National Health Commission.

There were only eight new cases in Wuhan, the city where the virus first emerged in December before growing into a national crisis and a pandemic.

It is the first time that new cases in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, have fallen to single-digits since figures started to be reported in January.

With cases falling dramatically in recent weeks, authorities this week began to loosen some restrictions on Hubei's 56 million people, who have been under quarantine since late January.

Healthy people living in low-risk areas of the province can now travel within Hubei. While Wuhan is not included, some of the city's companies were told they could resume work.

Only one other non-imported case was recorded elsewhere in the country.

But as global hotspots emerge elsewhere, China fears that cases arriving from abroad could undermine its progress.

On Thursday there were six more imported cases reported, bringing the total of infections from overseas to 85, health officials said.

Beijing has ordered a 14-day quarantine for everyone arriving in the city from any country.

Travellers flying into Beijing Capital International Airport from high-risk countries are now handled separately from other passengers.

A total of 80,793 people have now been infected in China.

President Xi Jinping said this week during his first visit to Wuhan since the crisis erupted that the spread of the disease has been "basically curbed" in China.

Six months since the new coronavirus outbreak, the pandemic is still far from over, the World Health Organization said Monday, warning that "the worst is yet to come".

Reaching the half-year milestone just as the death toll surpassed 500,000 and the number of confirmed infections topped 10 million, the WHO said it was a moment to recommit to the fight to save lives.

"Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world -- and our lives -- would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.

"We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over.

"Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up.

"We're all in this together, and we're all in this for the long haul.

"We will need even greater stores of resilience, patience, humility and generosity in the months ahead.

"We have already lost so much -- but we cannot lose hope."

Tedros also said that the pandemic had brought out the best and worst humanity, citing acts of kindness and solidarity, but also misinformation and the politicisation of the virus.

In an atmosphere of global political division and fractures on a national level, "the worst is yet to come. I'm sorry to say that," he said.

"With this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst."

Beijing, Jul 6: A city in northern China on Sunday sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported, according to official media here.

Bayannur, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announced a level III warning of plague prevention and control, state-run People’s Daily Online reported.

The suspected bubonic plague case was reported on Saturday by a hospital in Bayannur. The local health authority announced that the warning period will continue until the end of 2020.

"At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly,” the local health authority said.

On July 1, state-run Xinhua news agency said that two suspected cases of bubonic plague reported in Khovd province in western Mongolia have been confirmed by lab test results.

The confirmed cases are a 27-year-old resident and his 17-year-old brother, who are being treated at two separate hospitals in their province, it quoted a health official as saying.

The brothers ate marmot meat, the health official said, warning people not to eat marmot meat.

A total of 146 people who had contact with them have been isolated and treated at local hospitals, according to Narangerel.

Bubonic plague is a bacterial disease that is spread by fleas living on wild rodents such as marmots. It can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A couple died of bubonic plague in the western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ulgii last year after eating raw marmot meat.

The news of bubonic plague came after Chinese researchers issued an early warning over another potential pandemic caused by an influenza virus in pigs.

Scientists from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutes detected a pig influenza virus bearing genotype 4 (G4), which is contagious among pigs and has the possibility of jumping to humans, as the G4 virus is able to bind with human cells, state-run Global Times reported last week.

The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak, BBC reported.

"Controlling the prevailing G4 EA H1N1 viruses in pigs and close monitoring in human populations, especially workers in the swine industry, should be urgently implemented," Chinese researchers warned in the paper.

The new diseases were reported even as China grappled with the second attack of Covid-19 in Beijing after controlling it in Wuhan where it was first reported in December last year.

On Saturday, Beijing reported a single-digit Covid-19, local authorities said Sunday.

The number of newly confirmed Covid-19 cases reached a peak in Beijing on June 13 and 14 and then started declining in general, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.

From June 11 to July 4, the city reported 334 confirmed locally transmitted cases, 47 per cent of whom are workers of the Xinfadi wholesale food market, the official said.