19.02.2020 21:55 BEIJING — China has released a guideline requiring local authorities to work out differentiated measures for different county-level regions to fight the novel

BEIJING, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) — The daily number of newly confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) reported across China Monday dropped to under 2,000 for the first time, Mi Feng, an official with the National Health Commission, said Tuesday.

The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) learned from the press conference held by the State Council inter-agency task force at 15:00, 18 February that the number of new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP, or COVID-19) has dropped for 14 consecutive days. On 17 February, compared with the peak, for the first time, the number of daily new confirmed cases nationwide dropped below 2,000. For the first time, the number of daily new confirmed cases outside Hubei went below 100. And for the first time, the number of daily new fatal cases nationwide fell below 100. These three “first times” show that the outbreak is trending further in a positive direction.