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World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared on Wednesday that he is “very concerned” about the coronavirus situation in China, where the Communist Party lifted some of its draconian lockdown measures with seemingly minimal preparation, resulting in large numbers of infections and potential deaths.
The Chinese government announced in early December it would “optimize” its “zero-Covid” strategy, which for nearly three years relied on city-wide impositions of house arrest rules and the imprisonment of thousands of people in quarantine camps, including both those infected with Chinese coronavirus and those suspected of having been exposed. The strategy resulted in at least dozens of deaths – most recently several killed in a late-night bus crash en route to a quarantine camp, but more commonly, as the result of starvation, neglect, lack of medication, or suicide – and triggered a wave of protests nationwide.
Tedros – whose tenure at the helm of the W.H.O. has been a friendly one to the Chinese Communist Party – addressed the situation during the agency’s last press conference of the year on Wednesday. Tedros began his remarks with optimism about the general state of the pandemic, noting that omicron variant cases peaked globally in January and, since then, “the number of weekly reported [Chinese coronavirus] deaths has dropped almost 90 percent.” Tedros predicted the coronavirus pandemic, as a global emergency, would end in 2023.
Addressing China specifically, however, Tedros declared his agency “very concerned over the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of severe disease.”
“In order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground, W.H.O. needs more detailed information on disease severity, hospital admissions, and requirements for ICU support,” he said. “W.H.O. is supporting China to focus its efforts on vaccinating people at the highest risk across the country and we continue to offer our support for clinical care and protecting its health system.”
Tedros also raised years-long concerns about the origin of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic began in Wuhan, a central Chinese megacity of 11 million people, in late 2019.
