By Eduardo Baptista and Brenda Goh
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China on Thursday defended its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after U.S. President Joe Biden expressed concern and the World Health Organization (WHO) said that Beijing was underreporting virus deaths.
WHO Emergencies Director Mike Ryan said on Wednesday that Chinese officials were underrepresenting the data on several fronts, some of the most critical remarks from the UN agency to date.
China abandoned its strict COVID controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had protected its 1.4 billion people from the virus for three years.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press conference in Beijing that China has transparently and promptly shared COVID data with the WHO and said that “the situation China’s epidemic is controllable.”
“Facts have proven that China has always, in accordance with the principles of legality, expediency, openness and transparency, maintained close communication and shared relevant information and data with WHO in a timely manner,” he said. said Mao.
Chinese officials and experts outlined the latest situation Thursday in an online meeting with the WHO and its member states, China’s national health commission and diplomats said.
China reported one new COVID death on the mainland on Wednesday, up from five a day earlier, bringing its official death toll to 5,259.
Ryan said China’s figures underrepresent hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and deaths, and said Beijing’s definition of COVID-related deaths was too narrow.
Hours later, US President Joe Biden expressed concern about China’s handling of a COVID outbreak that is filling hospitals and overwhelming some funeral homes.
“They’re very sensitive … when we suggest they haven’t been so forthcoming,” Biden told reporters.
France’s health minister expressed similar fears, while German health minister Karl Lauterbach expressed concern about a new COVID subvariant linked to rising hospitalizations in the United States.
HOSPITAL FULL
The United States is one of more than a dozen countries that have imposed restrictions on travelers from China. Germany announced stricter rules on Thursday.
China, which has criticized such border controls, said its border with its Hong Kong special administrative region would reopen on Sunday for the first time in three years.
Ferry services between the city and Macau’s gambling hub would also resume on the same day, the Hong Kong government announced on Thursday.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways said on Thursday it would more than double its flights to mainland China.
Millions of people will travel to China later this month for the Lunar New Year holiday, an event the WHO says could generate another wave of infections without higher vaccination rates and other precautions.
China downplayed the seriousness of the situation. The state-run Global Times wrote on Wednesday that COVID had peaked in Beijing and several cities, citing interviews with doctors.
But on Thursday, at a hospital in the Qingpu district on the outskirts of Shanghai, bedridden patients lined the hallways of the emergency treatment area and the main hall, most of them elderly and several breathing with tanks. oxygen, a Reuters witness said.
A notice board said patients had to wait an average of five hours to be seen.
Staff declared an elderly patient dead and pinned a note to the body on the floor with the cause of death “respiratory failure”.
Police patrolled outside a nearby crematorium, where mourners wore wreaths and waited to collect the ashes of loved ones.
DATA GAPS
With one of the lowest official COVID death rates in the world, China has been regularly accused of under-reporting for political reasons.
In December, the WHO said it had not received any data from China on new COVID hospitalizations since Beijing’s U-turn policy.
In its latest weekly report, the WHO said China reported 218,019 new weekly COVID cases as of January 1. 1, adding that the data gaps could be due to authorities struggling to tally cases.
Methods of counting COVID deaths have varied from country to country since the pandemic broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Chinese health officials have said only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients infected with the virus are classified as COVID deaths.
Disease experts outside China say his approach misses other widely recognized types of deadly COVID complications, from blood clots and heart attacks to sepsis and kidney failure.
International health experts predict at least 1 million COVID-related deaths in China this year without urgent action. British health data firm Airfinity has estimated that around 9,000 people in China are likely dying from COVID every day.
The spike in COVID infections is hurting demand in China’s economy by $17 trillion, with a private sector survey on Thursday showing services activity fell in December.
But Chinese investors’ dismantling of COVID controls will revive growth that has slipped to its lowest rate in nearly half a century, expecting hopes that revived Asian stock markets on Thursday.
“China’s reopening is having a big impact…around the world,” said Joanne Goh, investment strategist at DBS Bank in Singapore, saying it would boost tourism and consumption and ease supply chain challenges. .
The end of travel restrictions in China this month is expected to revive demand in the global luxury retail market, but many consumers now see more reason to shop high-end locally.
(Reporting by Liz Lee, Eduardo Baptista and Bernard Orr in Beijing, Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Tom Westbrook in Singapore, Steve Holland in Hebron, Kentucky; Writing by John Geddie and Greg Torode; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raissa Kasolowsky)
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