China ended a two-month lockdown in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected, on Wednesday, but warned of a second-wave of infections.
Flights and trains have resumed operations, and highways opened to allow healthy residents and visitors to leave the capital of Hubei province.
Around 55,000 people are expected to leave the city, with authorities urging them not to leave unless absolutely necessary.
Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, was sealed off in late January to stop the spread of the virus. Over 50,000 people in Wuhan tested positive, while 2,500 died from the virus.
Meanwhile, new imported cases in the northern province of Heilongjiang continued to surge, forcing authorities to impose travel restrictions there.
The father and stepmother of Sara Sharif, a 10-year-old girl who was found dead in her home in Britain, were on Wednesday convicted of her murder after a trial which heard harrowing details of her treatment before her death.
The Afghan Taliban's acting minister for refugees, Khalil Rahman Haqqani, and six other people were killed in an explosion in the capital Kabul on Wednesday, his nephew said.
Israeli strikes in the northern and central Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed at least 33 Palestinians, most of them in Beit Lahiya town in the north of the enclave, medics said.
Syrian rebels backed by Turkey, who ousted president Bashar al-Assad, said on Tuesday they had taken the eastern city of Deir ez-Zur, while a war monitor confirmed Kurdish forces had withdrawn.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike that destroyed a clinic in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday has risen to six, while four more people remain under the rubble, the regional governor and emergency services said on Wednesday.