Four Chinese provinces lower COVID-19 emergency response level
24 February, 2020
Four Chinese provinces Yunnan, Guangdong, Shanxi and Guizhou on Monday (Feb 24) lowered their coronavirus emergency response measures, local health commissions said.
Yunnan and Guizhou cut their emergency response measures from level I to level III, while Guangdong and Shanxi lowered their measures to level II.
China includes a four-tier response system for public health emergencies that determines what measures it'll implement, with level I the most serious.
Gansu province was the first ever to lower its measures on Friday, accompanied by Liaoning on Saturday.
On Sunday, Chinese president Xi Jinping said that the brand new coronavirus epidemic was the "largest public health emergency" because the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has praised Beijing because of its handling of the epidemic, but China has been criticised at home for silencing early warnings from a whistleblower doctor who later died from the virus.
On Monday, South Korea reported the world's major total outside China after reporting 161 more coronavirus cases, taking its nationwide total to 763. Two more persons also have died from COVID-19 in the country, taking the death toll to seven.
South Korea had earlier raised its aware of the highest level, following the number of infections practically tripled over the weekend.
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