The World Health Organisation (WHO) has met with Chinese officials over surge in Covid-19 cases in the country to seek further information on the situation, and to offer its expertise and further support.
According to the statement released by the World Body, the meeting took place recently, reiterating the importance of vaccination and boosters to protect against severe disease and death for people at higher risk.
During the meeting, the China’s high-level officials briefed WHO on China’s evolving strategy and actions in the areas of epidemiology, monitoring of variants, vaccination, clinical care, communication and R&D.
Recall the latest reports, daily infections are currently at around 1.8 million, with mortalities at 9,000. A month back, when China’s Covid zero policy was in place, it was around 5,000 cases while projected that by the end of April 2023, China may see 1.7 million deaths from this wave of infections, Airfinity has said in its latest report.
WHO asked for regular sharing of specific and real-time data on the epidemiological situation including more genetic sequencing data, on disease impact, e.g hospitalisations, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and deaths and data on vaccinations delivered and vaccination status, especially in vulnerable people and those over 60 years old.
The World health body called on China to strengthen viral sequencing, clinical management and impact assessment, and expressed willingness to provide support on these areas, as well as on risk communications on vaccination to counter hesitancy.
Chinese scientists are invited to engage more closely in WHO-led COVID-19 expert networks including the COVID-19 clinical management network and to present detailed data on viral sequencing at a meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution on 3 January.
While WHO stressed the importance of monitoring and the timely publication of data to help China and the global community to formulate accurate risk assessments and to inform effective responses.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a tweet said China should be more forthcoming on pandemic situation in the country. “In order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the Covid-19 situation on the ground in China, WHO needs more detailed information,” Tedros said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, China has seen a sudden spike in Covid-19 infections after it decided to get rid of its zero-Covid policy, which was imposed three years to tackle surging pandemic. As per news reports, one of the major reasons behind the recent surge is ineffective domestic vaccines and less natural immunity among the people.
Many countries have issued strict guidelines against travellers from China. India, the US, Japan, Italy, Taiwan, while South Korea now enforced strict restrictions on Chinese travellers, also the US considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants.