Foreign experts board a bus to go to the designated place for medical isolation. They arrived at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Sept 25. [Photo/WeChat account of Optics Valley of China]

Charted planes carrying 105 foreign experts working for companies located in Optics Valley of China -- in Wuhan, capital city of Central China's Hubei province -- arrived at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Sept 25, according to local media reports.                                                                     

It was the ninth time that chartered planes have taken foreign experts back to Optics Valley, bringing the total number of foreign experts returned to the zone to 1,372.

The latest group of 105 foreign experts went to a designated place for medical isolation after they flew back to the zone.

Since the first flight picking up expats landed on May 1, the zone -- also known as the East Lake High-tech Development Zone -- has arranged a succession of charter flights to ferry employees back to key enterprises.

The size of the operation, in terms of the number of chartered flights and the number of returned expats, ranked the exercise as being the biggest undertaken in Wuhan.

To date, nucleic acid test results for all these expats have proved negative.

According to a survey of Optics Valley enterprises, it is expected that by the end of this year, over 600 more foreign experts will arrive at the zone via further chartered flights.

It was seen to be of great significance that foreign experts wanted to return to Wuhan to accelerate the revitalization of the zone.

It is understood that the associated enterprises of companies above a designated size -- those with annual sales of 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) or more -- and key leading enterprises in the zone have now all returned to work and production.

The progress of key projects in the zone has been accelerated.