A Manitoban who has been in China for nearly three months says the country is finally beginning to return to normal as the COVID-19 outbreak slows down in that part of the world — a glimmer of hope as other parts of the world struggle to contain its spread.

"I'm seeing a lot of people are starting to take off the [face] mask because things have relaxed a lot," Bruce Benson told CBC's Information Radio on Monday, despite a lingering negative social stigma tied to those who do not don masks in public.

The Manitoban has been in China since Jan. 3. At the time, he said COVID-19 was not on anyone's radar.

"Nobody was really too terribly concerned about it," he said.

It was not until about a month and a half ago later when he said fear and panic began to set in.

"Everything shut down," he said. "It was like nobody was anywhere."

But he said things have changed as the country, once at the epicentre of the pandemic, slowly returns to normalcy.

Marking a milestone

The COVID-19 outbreak has wreaked havoc across the world, leaving hundreds of thousands ill and thousands dead.

According to data provided to the World Health Organization by government officials, a total of 81,601 confirmed cases and 3,276 deaths have been reported in China, including 103 new cases and nine new deaths, as of Monday.

The WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11 — the first of its kind sparked by a coronavirus.

"Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death," reads an online update posted by WHO.

The country hit a new milestone last week when local transmission of COVID-19 fell to zero on Wednesday — its first day without any new cases reported in the country.

In Jinan, the capital of Shandong province in eastern China where Benson stayed, he said restaurants, stores and parks began opening up, and people started going out following that day of relative relief.

"The transition has been nothing short of miraculous," Benson said. "In my mind, I think that the rest of the world can have that, too."

Overcoming an outbreak

Benson has his theories as to how the country overcame the now-global outbreak that started in a market in Wuhan.

"If the government tells you to stay home, you stay home — and the Chinese people did that," he said. "They stayed home and they stayed the course, and now the course is over."

The Chinese government imposed new rules — including a 14-day mandatory quarantine for travellers arriving from outside the country, he said. After he took a trip to Thailand and returned to the country, he spent 11 days in self-isolation before he was politely directed to go stay in a "quarantine hotel, which was very nice," he said.

At the end of the two-week period, Benson said he was given a pink slip to prove he had passed the country's public health protocol.

Bruce Benson holds up the pink slip he said he was granted after three weeks of being in quarantine in China. (Submitted by Bruce Benson)

Lately, he has been seeing more signs of ordinariness and shared words of advice for Manitobans and Canadians.

"Stay home and stay the course," he said. "We are in a battle, in a war really, and the war is not against another human being."