China progress offers recovery hope

China has made a "promising start to rebooting its economy" and controlling the spread of COVID-19, according to a new report from Imperial College London, providing hope for nations in lockdown due to the pandemic.

There were no new domestic cases of the disease in China in the five days up to Monday, the day the study concluded.

This is an indication that the social distancing measures enacted in China have led to the control of COVID-19 in the country, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling at Imperial.

At the peak of the outbreak in China in early February, there were between 2,000 and 4,000 new confirmed cases per day.

"Our analysis indicates that China has made a promising start in rebooting their economy whilst controlling the spread of COVID-19," said Caroline Walters, a research associate at Imperial's Medical Research Council Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, or MRC CGIDA.

Imperial said that, initially, within-city movement and transmission were very strongly correlated in the provinces most affected by the epidemic.

After investigating urban movement in Chinese cities following the lifting of certain restrictions, the researchers said disease transmission has not resumed for the time being.

"We observed that the relaxation of strict social distancing measures and resumption of economic activities, so far, has not resulted in frequent local transmission of COVID-19 in China," said Fu Han, a researcher at the MRC CGIDA who co-authored the report.

In January 2020, China imposed strict social distancing in Wuhan, the then-epicenter of the outbreak, and followed up with measures in other provinces.

"At this difficult time, these results suggest that, after containment, a carefully managed and monitored relaxation of effective large-scale lockdowns may be possible even before an effective vaccine is available," said Professor Christl Donnelly, who is associate director of the MRC GIDA.

Authors of the study said the analysis provides hope for countries in lockdown. Around one-third of the world's population is being asked to adhere to mandatory or non-mandatory recommendations to stay at home and avoid gatherings.

"This analysis provides some hope for countries currently in various levels of lockdown that once case numbers are brought to low levels, it might be possible to relax social distancing－provided equal measures to limit the risk of the resurgence of transmission are introduced," said Professor Neil Ferguson, who is the director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics at Imperial.

Ferguson said that relaxation of social distancing policies must be supported by "rapid and ubiquitous testing and rigorous case and contact isolation policies".