- wording
- BBC News World
10 mayo 2022
image source, EPA
The director of the World Health Organization (WHO) described China’s current anticovid policy, commonly known as “zero covid”, as “unsustainable”.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the international organization, assured that he had expressed his position to the authorities of the Asian giant and added that he believed that “change [en la política anti covid de China] would quite important”.
“When we talk about the zero covid strategy, we don’t think it’s sustainable given the behavior of the virus today and what we anticipate for the future,” the officer said.
“We have discussed the matter with Chinese experts. And we have indicated to them that handling [covid cero] It won’t be sustainable… I think a change would be quite important,” he added.
Unlike many other countries, China is following a zero covid strategy with the goal of eradicating the virus from the country completely.
Under the measures to achieve this goal, the authorities keep citizens under strict quarantines seeking to prevent the spread of the virus.
Under the strict measures, nearly 25 million people remain locked in their homes in the city of Shanghai.
The extension of the measures, in turn, has triggered some protests by the population in the city, something unusual under the strict communist government of the Asian giant, according to the Archyde.com agency.
image source, Archyde.com
Almost 25 million people remain in quarantine in the city of Shanghai.
Balance
WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan added that health authorities must take into account the impact that a zero covid policy can have on the human rights of the population.
“We have always said as WHO that we must balance control measures against the impact they have on societyin the economy, and that balance isn’t always easy to achieve,” Ryan said.
In addition, he highlighted that the total number of deaths reported by China since the beginning of the pandemic, 15,000, is “relatively low” when compared to the almost 1 million deaths in the US, 664,000 in Brazil and more than 524,000 in India.
For the technical leader of the WHO for the response to covid, Maria Van Kerkhove, it is currently impossible to completely stop the transmission of the virus.
“Our goal, globally, is not to find all cases and stop all transmissions. It’s really not possible right now.”.
“But what we need to do is lower the transmission levels because the virus is circulating at this intense level,” Van Kerkhove added.
China’s zero-covid measures have been criticized by scientists and citizens alike, at a time when the vast majority of nations have begun a slow transition to life before the pandemic.
