Tag: COVID-19 Pandemic

Geneva —  The World Health Organization has urged China to share data on the origin of the coronavirus that caused the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO’s director-general issued this call during a year-end press conference Wednesday to assess the global health situation in 2022. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to put an optimist spin on 2022. He said the number of weekly reported COVID-19 deaths has dropped almost 90 percent since the peak of the pandemic at the end of January. He noted, however, that too many uncertainties and…

Students from China make up more than 30% of the international students in the United States. But many of them are not returning home during the end-of-year break at a time when China has relaxed its strict zero-COVID policy. From Los Angeles, VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains why. VOA

new delhi —  Chinese government officials and international experts have always been at loggerheads about the COVID-19 situation in the world’s most populated country. But now they have changed positions. For more than a year, international experts and non-Chinese businesses have been criticizing Beijing’s stringent controls, including the use of lockdowns, transportation blockades and mass testing that slowed the economy and disrupted global supply chains. The controls appeared excessive in a country that has acknowledged just 5,242 COVID-related deaths compared with the loss of 1.1 million people in the U.S.…

washington / taipei, taiwan —  Almost two weeks after China relaxed its strict “zero-COVID” policy measures, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) on Tuesday reported five deaths related to the virus after reporting two deaths the day before. Chinese authorities also reported 2,722 new confirmed cases nationwide and added that all five people who died were infected domestically. In a nation with more than 1.4 billion residents, there is public skepticism about the accuracy of the NHC figures because they are much lower than what experts predicted even before the end…

Washington —  The United States on Tuesday offered to share vaccines with China to stem soaring COVID-19 cases, saying containing the outbreak was in the interest of the world. It is unlikely that China would accept the offer from the United States, its frequent adversary, after Beijing invested heavily in COVID-19 diplomacy that included shipping its homegrown vaccines around the world. “It’s important that all countries focus on getting people vaccinated and making testing and treatment easily available,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. “The U.S. is the largest…

China continues to relax its stringent COVID regulations even as reports emerge about a surge in cases and deaths. Monday, state media reported that people in Chongqing, one of China’s largest cities can go to work “as normal,” even if they have mild COVID symptoms. Concern is still high about the relatively low vaccination rate among China’s elderly. State media report that vaccination teams are going door to door in Beijing hoping to vaccinate people over 60. Another potential problem is that since much of China has been under lockdown…

Beijing —  Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet on Sunday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in COVID-19 cases that has hit urban centres from north to south… China is in the first of an expected three waves of COVID cases this winter, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist, Wu Zunyou. Further waves will come as people follow the tradition of returning en masse to their home areas for the Lunar New Year holiday next month, he said. China has not reported any COVID…