The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that it is "very concerned" about the "explosion" of the number of Covid-19 cases in China and called on Beijing to speed up vaccination of the most vulnerable population, asking for more detailed information about the severity of the epidemic.
"The WHO is very concerned about the development of the situation in China... In order to carry out a full risk assessment" the WHO believes it is necessary to obtain "more detailed information on the severity of the disease, hospital admission and intensive care needs", Tedros Adhanom Gebrejesus told reporters in Geneva .
He added that the WHO supports China to concentrate its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk of contracting the disease.
In 2020, the Chinese government introduced strict health restrictions, implementing a "zero covid" policy. But at the beginning of December, she canceled most of those measures, as the population began to protest more and more about the measures, and because of their significant impact on the economy.
Since then, the number of cases of the infection has "exploded", raising fears that there will be high mortality among the oldest, who are particularly vulnerable.
Dr. Michael Ryan, who is in charge of managing health emergencies at the WHO, has long insisted that more vaccinations are needed because "this highly contagious virus has always been difficult to completely stop with social and public health measures alone," he said and again emphasized the importance of vaccination.
"We really need to concentrate on vaccination. I also point out that China has made significant progress in recent weeks in the distribution of vaccines," he added.
He said that vaccination is a way of getting out of the wave of infection with the micron strain of the virus. That strain that appeared a little over a year ago is the most contagious.
The vaccination campaign in China was mainly carried out using two vaccines from the Chinese laboratories Sinovak and Sinofarm.
Ryan said that the WHO is not involved, but that he thinks there are ongoing negotiations between the Chinese authorities and at least one of the manufacturers of vaccines with information RNA technology, to have those vaccines approved and manufactured in China, and he encouraged those negotiations.
Vaccines with information technology from the American companies Moderna and Pfizer were extremely effective in alleviating the severity of the disease, according to the Agence France-Presse.
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