China pushed back on Thursday against allegations that it has not been adequately transparent about the severity of the Covid-19 surge that has ripped through the country in the past month, and suggested that the country’s incidence of severe illness and death compares favourably with other nations.’
‘China has always shared his information and data responsibly with international community” Liu Pengyu, spokesman for Beijing’s Washington embassy, said in a news briefing.’In the last month we have two exchanges with the [World Health Organization],’Liu said.’The day before yesterday we have another exchange of technical discussions with the WHO, and Chinese scientists are “now working with WHO to have further discussions about the data’.
The embassy official spoke as Covid-19 infections continued to surge in China after authorities there abandoned almost three years of stringent coronavirus containment measures that had isolated the country and severely limited the movement of its people. The rise in infections amid criticism that authorities in China have not been reporting infection data accurately has prompted many countries, including the US, Japan and Australia to make Covid-19 testing and screening a requirement for those arriving from, or by way of, China.
Liu’s assessment follows comments last week by Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, that current figures being published from China under-represented numbers of hospital admissions, ICU admissions and “particularly in terms of death”.
Following a recommendation by the Swedish presidency of the European Union, which was approved unanimously in a meeting of EU health officials, Germany on Thursday announced that travellers from China would be required to provide a negative preflight Covid-19 test.
EU authorities were also asked to step up the “testing and sequencing of waste water from airports with international flights and aircraft arriving from China” to monitor for potential new variants of the coronavirus. Amid Covid gloom, China’s tourism industry faces long road to recovery
5 Jan 2023
Earlier this week, Beijing denounced entry restrictions on Chinese travellers as unscientific and unacceptable for targeting the country. With the exception of Hong Kong, mainland Chinese authorities require incoming travellers to undergo on-site polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, without regard to where they embarked. Answering questions about China’s response to offers of vaccine assistance from the US, Liu said his country’s domestically developed vaccines were as effective as the mRNA types developed in the US.
‘We have seen a rapid increase in Covid cases recently.Hoever,globally speaking, China still had the lowest rates of severe cases and mortality,’he said.’The surge of infections in China is not an unusual case from other places in the world.“The Chinese people were able to hold on through the most dangerous time’ of Covid-19’s spread, he added.’This proves, I think, the safety and efficacy of the vaccines’developed in China.China must import mRNA vaccines to stop Covid-19 ‘disaster’: US health experts
‘Comparing the inactivated vaccine, which is mainly produced by Chinese by China with mRNA vaccines, they have the same effectiveness in preventing severe cases caused by Omicron,’ Liu said, referring to the coronavirus subvariant and citing the results of a study by the University of Hong Kong.
A summary of that study, published last March,showed China’s home-grown CoronaVac 97.9 per cent to be effective against “severe/fatal disease” among those 60 years of age or older, compared with 98.0 per cent for the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.The results also deemed CoronaVac 50.7 per cent effective against mild or moderate disease in the same age group, compared with 71.6 per cent for the Pfizer/BioNTech jab . -south China Morning Post
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