Over 98% of China's major industrial firms resume work

Beijing :China's manufacturing sector has steadily advanced production resumption, with 98.6 per cent of major industrial firms resuming work amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Monday.

Around 89.9 per cent of employees in industrial companies with an annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan ($2 million) have returned to their workplaces, Xinhua news agency quoted Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the MIIT, as saying at a briefing here.

In Hubei, where the pandemic originated in its capital Wuhan last December, the average work resumption rate of industrial firms have surpassed 95 per cent so far.

The production and operation of large pharmaceutical companies producing vitamin, antibiotic, antipyretic and analgesic ingredients have returned to normal, according to the vice minister.

Meanwhile, 76 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises nationwide have also resumed operations.

Some 92 leading enterprises in key industries have helped boost the work resumption of more than 400,000 their upstream and downstream enterprises, Xin said.

As of Monday, China reported 82,149 confirmed coronavirus cases with 3,308 fatalities.

Although the virus originated in China, the US now has the highest number of cases (142,502) globally, while Italy has recorded the largest death toll (10,779), according to the latest updates by the Washington-based Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.