The World Health Organization (WHO) applauded this Friday the easing of China’s “covid zero” strategy after several days of protests in the country against the restrictions.
“We are pleased to see that the Chinese authorities are adjusting their strategies and really trying to calibrate control measures with people, their lives and their human rights,” Mike Ryan, the WHO emergency manager, said at a news conference in Geneva.
“We have all had to deal with movement restrictions that have changed our lives, frankly it is exhausting for everyone, so there is natural frustration and it is essential that governments listen to their people,” he added, quoted by the EFE news agency.
The revolt of the Chinese people against the response of the authorities in the fight against the pandemic took to the streets last weekend, on a scale not seen in decades.
The authorities reacted quickly, increasing police presence and reinforcing surveillance on social media.
Meanwhile, several cities have begun to ease restrictions, that is, abandoning massive daily tests, one of the most tedious rules of the “zero covid” policy, in force for three months.
The WHO official said, however, that “each country must face the fight against infectious diseases according to its risk assessment and the instruments at its disposal” and, in the case of China, one of the great challenges was the low vaccination rate, which is beginning to rise.
This Friday, the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, who has so far imposed the “zero covid” policy, argued that the less lethal variant of the omicron virus allows “more flexibility” in the restrictions.
In turn, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, quoted by Agence France-Presse, once again warned about the permanent danger of a pandemic that has not yet ended.
“We are much closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic has ended, but we have not arrived yet,” he stressed at a press conference.
Source: TSF
