The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in China that we are witnessing occurred before the Chinese government began to ease sanitary restrictions, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Wednesday.
China’s Ministry of Health has acknowledged that infections are “rising rapidly” in Beijing. Last week, the government abruptly abandoned its Covid zero strategy, notably decreeing an end to automatic quarantine center placement for people who have tested positive and an end to mass screening campaigns.
“The explosion of cases in China is not due to the lifting of anti-Covid restrictions. The explosion of cases in China began long before any easing of the zero Covid policy,” said Michael Ryan, WHO chief in charge of managing it. of health emergencies.
Control measures do not “stop” the disease
According to the WHO official, the scenario that “China lifted the restrictions and suddenly the epidemic is out of control” is not the correct explanation.
He said the “disease has spread rapidly because … control measures alone do not stop it.” “The increase in the intensity of transmissions occurred long before any change in the strategy” aimed at limiting contamination, the WHO official stressed.
Michael Ryan, “the Chinese authorities have strategically decided that for them”, the Covid zero strategy “was no longer the best option”.
Low vaccination coverage
With the prevalence of the highly contagious Omicron variant, extremely tough restrictions such as those imposed in China do not serve the same purpose as in previous waves when vaccination coverage was low.
These types of measures were used to protect health systems while waiting for an improvement in vaccination coverage, but now their effectiveness is no longer the same, said Michael Ryan.
“Data from areas like Hong Kong show that the Chinese inactivated vaccines, with a third dose, are doing very well.” But “this third dose is needed” for the vaccine to be effective, she stressed.
Chinese leaders are determined to push ahead economically even as the country faces an epidemic wave that experts say it is ill-equipped to deal with. Millions of older people are still not fully immunized and hospitals lack the resources to handle a massive influx of sick people.
Source: BFM TV
