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The World Health Organization has welcomed the relaxation of China's anti-Covid strategy following angry protests against Beijing's zero case policy.
We are pleased to learn that the Chinese authorities are adjusting their existing strategy and are indeed now seeking to scale up control measures for this virus which are essential for life, livelihoods and human rights, said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of the WHO's emergency programme, told a regular press briefing in Geneva.
It is indeed important that governments listen to their citizens when people are suffering. We really want to see this adaptation happen and accelerate, Dr. Ryan insisted.
Chinese anger against the hard-line health crackdown on the pandemic boiled over last weekend, with a mobilization on a scale unprecedented in decades.
Authorities responded quickly by increasing police presence and stepping up social media monitoring.
At the same time, several cities began loosening restrictions, including abandoning the mass daily testing that is one of the tedious pillars of life under the zero case Covid policy that has been in place for nearly three years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping who imposed the zero case Covid policy argued that the Omicron variant of the virus, which is less lethal, allows more flexibility in restrictions.
Dr. Ryan insisted that the unprecedented infectiousness of the Omicron variant of the virus made the Covid zero case policy, which might have been able to work on earlier variants or even the original strain, pretty much meaningless.
This is indeed hard to stop and it's slipping through your fingers very, very quickly, he said, adding that we need to try to protect the most vulnerable. When we can't stop a fire, we remove people who are in danger. And the way to get people away from the fire in this case is to vaccinate."
For his part, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adanom Gebrejesus warned once again of the danger that continues to be posed by a pandemic that is not over. We are much closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over, but we are not there yet, he said during the press briefing. Gaps in surveillance, testing, contact tracing and vaccination continue to create the ideal conditions for a new and alarming variant to emerge, he warned.
Source: protothema.gr
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