16 charter planes sent to bring back Chinese nationals from virus-hit countries

China sent charter planes to bring back 2,744 Chinese stranded in the coronavirus-affected countries, the nation's top civil aviation authorities said Wednesday.

Sixteen Chinese charter planes flew to Iran, Italy, Britain, the United States and Spain from March 4 to April 12, bringing back home the Chinese, including 1,449 students studying abroad, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The daily number of incoming passengers through airports across China has stabilized at 2,000 to 3,000 over the past 16 days, as there were no more than 20 inbound flights each day of the period.

China has stepped up measures to guard against imported coronavirus infections, cutting the number of international flights and requiring all international flights bound for Beijing to be diverted to other airports first.

The airport in Wuhan, the city once hardest hit by the novel coronavirus, has resumed flights to and from 45 domestic cities since April 8 when travel restrictions placed on the epicenter of the outbreak was lifted, said Sun Shaohua, deputy director of the CAAC operation monitoring center.

As of Tuesday, there had been 799 flights to and from Wuhan, transporting 40,600 passengers, Sun said.

Key airport projects were proceeding smoothly in Hubei Province. As of March 25, four key airport projects in Ezhou, Jingzhou, Yichang and Xiangyang cities had resumed construction. All workers for the projects have returned to work earlier this month, Sun said.