China yesterday defended the way it is fighting the Covid-19 epidemic, after US President Joe Biden expressed concern and the World Health Organization (WHO) said Beijing was not reporting all deaths.
Mike Ryan, the WHO's executive director of health emergencies, said on Wednesday that Chinese officials are underrepresenting the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, intensive care admissions and especially deaths.
China lifted strict Covid controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had protected its 1,4 billion people from the virus for three years.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a regular press conference in Beijing that China has transparently and quickly shared data on covid with the WHO and that China's epidemic situation can be controlled.
Yesterday, Chinese officials and experts presented the latest situation at an online meeting with the WHO and its member states, the Chinese National Health Commission and diplomats said.
China reported one new death from the virus on the mainland on Wednesday, compared with five days earlier, bringing its official death toll to 5.259. Hours later, Biden expressed concern about China's handling of the outbreak, which is filling hospitals and overwhelming some funeral homes. France's health minister expressed similar fears, while Germany's health minister, Karl Lauterbach, expressed concern over a new sub-variant of covid linked to a growing number of hospitalizations in the US.
The US is one of more than 12 countries that have imposed restrictions on travelers from China. Germany announced stricter rules yesterday, and in the future entry into the country will require at least a quick test for the coronavirus.
China, which has criticized such border controls, said its border with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would reopen on Sunday for the first time in three years. The ferry service between that city and the gambling center of Macau will also resume on the same day, the Hong Kong government announced yesterday.
Millions of people will travel within the country later this month during the Chinese New Year, when the WHO says a new wave of infections could occur without higher vaccination rates and other precautions.
Chinese authorities are downplaying the seriousness of the situation, but the corridors of the emergency department of a hospital in Shanghai were full of patients on beds yesterday, Reuters reported. Most were elderly patients, and some were connected to oxygen. There was a prominent announcement that patients would have to wait an average of five hours for an appointment. Police patrolled outside the nearby crematorium, where mourners wore wreaths and waited to receive the ashes of their loved ones.
China, which has one of the lowest official death rates from covid in the world, is routinely accused of not representing the real situation for political reasons.
Methods of counting Covid-2019 deaths have varied from country to country since the pandemic broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late XNUMX. Chinese health officials say only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as Covid-XNUMX deaths.
Health experts outside China say her approach leaves out other types of fatal complications from Covid, from blood clots to heart attacks, sepsis and kidney failure.
International health experts predict at least one million Covid-related deaths in China this year if urgent action is not taken. According to the British health data company Airfinity, around 9.000 people are likely to die in China every day from covid.
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