WHO on relaxation of anti-coronavirus measures in China: “It is important that governments listen to their citizens”

The World Health Organization today welcomed the relaxation of China’s anti-Covid strategyfollowing angry protests against Beijing’s zero case policy.

“We are pleased to learn that the Chinese authorities adapt their existing strategy and they are indeed trying to scale up now the control measures of this virus which are necessary for life, livelihood and human rights,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of its emergency program WHERE during the regular press briefing in Geneva.

“It is indeed important that governments listen to their citizens when people suffer. We really want to see this adaptation happen and accelerate,” insisted Dr. Ryan as reported by the Athens News Agency.

The rage of Chinese against the hard health line to fight the pandemic overflowed last weekend, with a mobilization of a scale unprecedented in decades.

Authorities quickly responded by increasing police presence and stepping up monitoring of social media.

At the same time, several cities began to relax restrictionssuch as abandoning the mass daily tests that are one of the tedious pillars of life under the zero-case Covid policy, which has been in place for almost three years.

“We are much closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over, but we are not there yet”

Today, Chinese President Xi Jinping – who imposed the zero case Covid policy – argued that the ‘Omicron’ variant of the virus, which is less lethal, allows “more flexibility” in restrictions.

Dr. Ryan insisted that the unprecedented transmissibility of the ‘Omicron’ variant of the virus made the zero-case Covid policy, which might have been able to work on earlier variants or even the original strain, pretty much meaningless.

“It’s really hard to stop and it slips through your fingers very, very quickly“, he said, adding that “we must try to protect the most vulnerable. When we can’t stop a fire, we move the people who are at risk away. And the way to get people away from the fire in this case is to get vaccinated».

For his part, the director general of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, once again warned of the continuing danger of a pandemic that is not over. “We are much closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over, but we are not there yet“, he stated during the press briefing. “Gaps in surveillance, testing, contact tracing and vaccination continue to create the ideal conditions for a new and worrying variant to emerge,” he warned.