China’s zero COVID-19 Strategy to defeat the pandemic is not sustainable: WHO
New Delhi: The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) commented on China’s handling of the coronavirus. In a statement, he said, “China’s zero-COVID strategy to defeat the pandemic is not sustainable,”
Draconian measures have trapped most of Shanghai’s 25 million people at home for weeks as China tries to stamp out the country’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began. Yet the Shanghai lockdown has intensified, causing outrage and rare protests in the last major country still pursuing a zero-COVID policy.
“When we talk about the zero-COVID strategy, we don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future. We have discussed this issue with Chinese experts and we indicated that the approach will not be sustainable. I think a shift would be very important,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference on Tuesday.
Shanghai remains the epicentre of the latest outbreak, but people in dozens of cities are going through some form of lockdown, including in the capital Beijing, which reported a total of 37 cases of the virus on May 10.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the country will stick to its strategy. He gave this statement during a meeting with top leaders saying the country with officials vowing to “resolutely fight” against any questioning of its virus control policies.
(Vinayak)
