The gradual change from the policy of zero cases of Covid-19 in China to that of “coexistence” with the new coronavirus “is only a matter of time,” a Macao deputy defended this Thursday.
In September, the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stressed that the number of deaths from Covid-19 has fallen to the lowest level since March 2020, Ron Lam U Tou recalled.
Thanks to the increase in vaccination, most countries have already eliminated quarantines for travelers, “so that the economy can recover as quickly as possible,” said the deputy, in the run-up to the agenda in a session of the Assembly Legislative of Macau.
Lam said he believed that China would also change its policy, “sooner or later”, although Chinese leader Xi Jinping defended the ‘zero cases’ strategy of Covid-19, on October 16, at the opening of the 20th Congress of the Communist Union. Chinese party.
The deputy recalled that the “coexistence” with Covid-19 has caused “an overload in the health system and high mortality rates, and gave the neighboring Chinese region of Hong Kong as an example, where” more than nine thousand elderly people died at cause of the new coronavirus”.
Lam called on the government to review the contingency plans, given “the problems and shortcomings” recorded during the worst outbreak of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, in June and July, which caused six deaths and more than 1,800 cases.
The outbreak led the authorities to decree a partial confinement, something “that again affected the economy, which was already in recession,” lamented the deputy, who asked the authorities to avoid “the excessive application of prevention measures” and reduce “social costs”. “.
Lam made it a priority to increase the vaccination rate of high-risk groups. On September 22, the leader of the Macau government, Ho Iat Seng, revealed that there were more than 6,000 people over the age of 80 who were “still” not “vaccinated”.
According to official data released today by the Macau Health Services, 91.97% of the population has been vaccinated against Covid-19, although 3.5% have only received one dose and 40.6% two doses. .
Macau follows the zero case policy imposed by Beijing, which consists of isolating all positive cases and close contacts, strict border control, massive nucleic acid testing campaigns and the confinement of entire neighborhoods or cities.
So far, the Chinese special administrative region has registered six deaths and 2,532 infected (793 confirmed cases and 1,739 asymptomatic) linked to the new coronavirus.
Source: TSF
