BEIJING — China's courier sector now handled more than 200 million parcels every day, almost the same as the level before the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, Bian Zuodong, an official with the State Post Bureau, said on April 25.

Bian said that 96.6 percent of towns and villages in the country, a weak link in the courier industry chain, have established stations for express delivery service.

Over 3 billion parcels have been mailed and delivered in the rural areas in the first quarter despite the epidemic, facilitating flows of farm produce to cities and industrial products to rural areas for more than 200 billion yuan ($28.24 billion).

China has built 406,000 sets of intelligent express boxes in recent years as automated delivery model has become a trend in the country's postal industry, said Bian.