China affirms effective zero-COVID strategy

People are tested for COVID-19 in Beijing on May 11 – Photo: REUTERS

“We hope the individuals involved can take an objective and reasonable view of China’s epidemic prevention and control policies… and refrain from making irresponsible remarks,” AFP news agency quoted him as saying. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a press conference on May 11.

China’s Foreign Ministry asserts that China’s zero-COVID strategy is “scientific and effective”.

The above statement responds to the comment on May 10 by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that China’s way of fighting the epidemic is not sustainable and needs to change.

“We don’t think that’s sustainable given how the virus behaves and what we predict in the future,” Tedros said.

Following that, WHO expert Mike Ryan said: “We need to balance epidemic control measures with their impact on society, the economy, and that adjustment is not always easy. easy”.

The Chinese government has so far resolutely applied a zero-COVID policy to deal with the rapidly spreading disease in many cities of the country. About 25 million people in Shanghai are still under blockade while the capital increasingly tightens epidemic control.

On May 10, a peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Nature The removal of the zero-COVID policy will create a “tsunami” in China, which could kill about 1.6 million people, according to researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai.

Specifically, if the zero-COVID barrier is removed, China could record more than 112 million symptomatic cases, 5 million hospitalizations and 1.55 million deaths.

Low vaccination rates, especially among the elderly in China, represent a huge risk, according to the study.

“We found that the level of immunity generated by the March 2022 vaccination campaign was not enough to stop a wave because the Omicron variant could overwhelm care capacity, and emergency needs could be 15.6 times the current capacity,” the scientists said.