{"id":594368,"date":"2023-01-05T11:49:28","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T17:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/china-defends-its-covid-response-after-who-biden-concerns\/"},"modified":"2023-01-05T11:49:28","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T17:49:28","slug":"china-defends-its-covid-response-after-who-biden-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/china-defends-its-covid-response-after-who-biden-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"China defends its COVID response after WHO, Biden concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Eduardo Baptista and Brenda Goh<\/p>\n

BEIJING\/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after U.S. President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The WHO\u2019s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts, some of the U.N. agency\u2019s most critical remarks to date.<\/p>\n

China scrapped its stringent COVID controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular media briefing in Beijing that China had transparently and quickly shared COVID data with the WHO and said China\u2019s \u201cepidemic situation is controllable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacts have proved that China has always, in accordance with the principles of legality, timeliness, openness and transparency,\u00a0maintained close communication and shared relevant information and data with the WHO in a timely manner,\u201d Mao said.<\/p>\n

Chinese officials and experts outlined the latest situation on Thursday in an online meeting with the WHO and its member states, China\u2019s national health commission and diplomats said.<\/p>\n

China reported one new COVID death in the mainland for Wednesday, compared with five a day earlier, bringing its official death toll to 5,259.<\/p>\n

Ryan said China\u2019s numbers under-represented hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and deaths, and said Beijing\u2019s definition of COVID-related deaths was too narrow.<\/p>\n

Hours later, U.S. President Joe Biden raised concern about China\u2019s handling of a COVID outbreak that is filling hospitals and overwhelming some funeral homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very sensitive \u2026 when we suggest they haven\u2019t been that forthcoming,\u201d Biden told reporters.<\/p>\n

The French health minister voiced similar fears, while German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach voiced concern about a new COVID subvariant linked to growing U.S. hospitalisations.<\/p>\n

Crowded hospital<\/h2>\n

The United States is one of more than a dozen countries that have imposed restrictions on travellers from China. Germany announced tighter rules on Thursday.<\/p>\n

China, which criticised such border controls, said its border with its special administrative region of Hong Kong would reopen on Sunday, for the first time in three years.<\/p>\n

Ferry services between the city and the gambling hub of Macau would also resume on the same day, the Hong Kong government announced late on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong\u2019s Cathay Pacific Airways said on Thursday it would more than double flights to mainland China.<\/p>\n

Millions of people will travel within China later this month for the Lunar New Year holiday, an event that the WHO has said could generate another wave of infections without more higher vaccination rates and other precautions.<\/p>\n

China has played down the severity of the situation. The state-run Global Times wrote on Wednesday that COVID had peaked in Beijing and several cities, citing interviews with doctors.<\/p>\n

But at a hospital in Shanghai\u2019s suburban Qingpu district, patients on beds lined the corridors of the emergency treatment area and main lobby on Thursday, most of them elderly and several breathing with oxygen tanks, a Reuters witness said.<\/p>\n

A notice board advised that patients would have to wait an average of five hours to be seen. <\/p>\n

Staff declared one elderly patient dead and pinned a note to the body on the floor with cause of death \u201crespiratory failure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Police patrolled outside a nearby crematorium, where mourners carried wreathes and waited to collect ashes of loved ones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Data gaps<\/h2>\n

With one of the lowest official COVID death tolls in the world, China has been routinely accused of under-reporting for political reasons.<\/p>\n

In December, the WHO said it had received no data from China on new COVID hospitalisations since Beijing\u2019s policy U-turn.<\/p>\n

In its latest weekly report, the WHO said China reported 218,019 new weekly COVID cases as of Jan. 1, adding that gaps in data might be due to authorities struggling to tally cases.<\/p>\n

Methods for counting COVID deaths have varied across countries since the pandemic erupted in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.<\/p>\n

Chinese health officials have said only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as COVID deaths. <\/p>\n

Disease experts outside China say its approach misses other widely recognised types of fatal COVID complications, from blood clots to heart attacks, sepsis and kidney failure.<\/p>\n

International health experts predict at least 1 million COVID-related deaths in China this year without urgent action. British-based health data firm Airfinity has estimated about 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID.<\/p>\n

Surging COVID infections are hurting demand in China\u2019s $17 trillion economy, with a private-sector survey on Thursday showing services activity shrank in December. <\/p>\n

But investors expect China\u2019s dismantling of COVID controls will revive growth that has slid to its lowest rate in nearly half a century, hopes that lifted Asian equity markets on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina reopening has a big impact \u2026 worldwide,\u201d said Joanne Goh, an investment strategist at DBS Bank in Singapore, saying it would spur tourism and consumption and ease supply-chain crunches.<\/p>\n

An end to China\u2019s travel curbs this month is expected to revive demand in the global luxury retail market, but many consumers now see more reasons to do their high-end shopping locally.<\/p>\n

(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)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eduardo Baptista and Brenda Goh BEIJING\/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after U.S. President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths. The WHO\u2019s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":594369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1827,1102],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-594368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-china","8":"category-defends"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}