China’s central province of Hubei, excluding the provincial capital Wuhan, reported zero new cases of coronavirus over 24 hours for the first time during the outbreak, as authorities continued to contain imported infections in other parts of the country.

Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, reported 126 new confirmed cases on Thursday but there were no new infections in the province apart from those, the National Health Commission said on Friday.

Elsewhere in China, schools in provinces reporting no new cases for a number of days, started to set their opening dates in a sign of the country returning to normal.

Qinghai, a northwestern province in China that had reported no new infections for 29 days as of March 5, said it would stagger the start date of different school days from March 11 to March 20, according to a notice posted on an official website on Friday.

Separately, the southerwestern province of Guizhou, which reported no new infections for 18 days, had said at the end of February that schools would start from March 16.

Outside of Hubei, there were 17 new confirmed cases, bringing the total new infections in mainland China to 143 on Thursday, up from 139 cases a day earlier.

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