BEIJING — China's courier sector reported a contraction in April due to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases, but express delivery activities have picked up amid the country's efforts to smoothen logistics and transportation, a monthly industry index has shown.

The China express delivery development index came in at 241.3 last month, down 3.9 percent month on month, according to the State Post Bureau.

Bucking the downward trend, the subindexes for service quality and development trend stood at 325 and 65.6 in April, rising 7.1 percent and 5.1 percent from a month earlier, respectively.

As the country ramped up efforts to address logistics bottlenecks and improve services, the sector's business volume bounced back significantly to about 300 million parcels per day since April 24, according to the bureau.

China's courier companies handled a total of 31.71 billion parcels in the January-April period, a yearly increase of 4.2 percent. Their business volume declined 11.9 percent last month.