Chinese county in coronavirus outbreak center to resume inter-provincial bus services

A county in Hubei, center of the novel coronavirus outbreak in central China, announced on Thursday that inter-provincial bus services will resume Friday as the county has seen no COVID-19 cases for over two weeks.

Tongcheng, a major source of migrant workers in the southeastern part of Hubei, will reopen its first batch of passenger bus routes to cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Shishi, Wenzhou and Shantou at 8:00 a.m. Friday, according to the county government.

Passengers are required to take the health certificate and ID card, have their body temperatures measured before getting on and wear face masks during the entire journey, the government said in a statement.

These buses will travel on expressways without any stops, said the statement.

On March 4, the last COVID-19 patient was cured and discharged from a hospital in Tongcheng, bringing the number of existing infected cases in the county to zero. A non-stop bus carrying 43 migrant workers left on March 14 for Yiwu, a small commodity production hub in eastern China's Zhejiang Province, becoming the first batch of laborers departing from the county since the epidemic.

The National Health Commission said Thursday Chinese mainland reported zero increase in domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases for Wednesday. Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, reported no new confirmed cases for the same day.