After months of Coronavirus lockdown, China’s Hubei province is set to allow the resumption of all transportation from Wuhan on April 8 – the seat and centre of the deadly virus that has claimed thousands of lives worldwide.

The coronavirus first emerged in the city last December.

According to a statement posted on the provincial government’s website on Tuesday, people in Wuhan will be allowed to leave the city and Hubei province. The pandemic has infected more than 80,000 Chinese people and claimed the lives of over 3200 people but recently, Hubei reported no new domestic infections on March 19.

This is, of course, a huge deal for President Xi Jinping who has been reporting that his government has managed to stem the tide of COVID-19.

While the virus loses steam in China and gains momentum in much of Europe, the world’s second-largest economy is slowly emerging from months of shutdowns and restarting work.

Bloomberg reports that car sales in China hit a new low last month but are set to rebound as the virus slows and consumers return to shopping. “Real-time indicators show that China is re-starting its industrial complex,” analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein said in a note Tuesday. “Clearly the re-start is at an early stage, but things are gradually improving.”

The Bloomberg report also states that carriers are slowly restoring flights following the massive slump in the aviation market due to COVID-19. While all other top 10 markets around the world continued on the path to steady decline, scheduled capacity rose 2.4% last week from the previous seven days to 9.2 million seats.

Chinese subway traffic also increased by 21 per cent last week and online sales saw a rise in volume. Honda, Nissan, SAIC, Tesla and Toyota have given favourable comments about their resumed production in the same report.