The World Health Organization again urged health officials in China to regularly share specific real-time information about the country’s Covid surge, as the UK joined other countries in introducing travel restrictions , citing lack of data as the reason.
WHO’s Covid experts met with Chinese officials on Friday and “re-emphasized the importance of transparency and regular data sharing to formulate accurate risk assessments and to inform an effective response,” the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In particular, WHO requested more genetic sequencing data, data on hospitalizations, admissions and deaths in intensive care units, and data on vaccinations applied and vaccination status, especially in vulnerable people and over 60 years of age.
The WHO invited the Chinese scientists to present detailed data on the viral sequencing at a WHO technical meeting to be held on 3 January.
China’s National Health Commission said only of the meeting that its health officials had exchanged views with the WHO and that more technical exchanges would take place.
A surge in Covid infections in China and doubts about its official figures have prompted the return of health checks in Europe and around the world in the wake of the swift end to Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid strategy.
China is set to significantly ease its inbound and outbound travel restrictions starting Jan. 8, and travel for the later Lunar New Year, which is expected to see hundreds of millions of Chinese workers return to cities of regional origin, and many are expected to catch the disease in areas that have fewer medical facilities.
Chinese state media reported that major hospitals in Shanghai had seen the number of emergency patients double in recent days, prompting non-urgent patients to be transferred to smaller hospitals.
At the city’s Ruijin Hospital, the number of emergency visits reached 1,500 a day, with Covid patients accounting for 80% of those visits, the state-backed Global Times reported on Friday .
The UK became the latest country to introduce restrictions in a move designed to align with US policy. The decision was made because of what the government believes is a lack of reliable data from China.
The United States attributed its recent policy change to a lack of information about Covid variants and concerns that the surge in cases in China could lead to the development of new variants.
British MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defense select committee, suggested the government’s emergency response committee, known as Cobra, should have been convened amid concerns about the reliability of data from the china
“We should take our own precautionary measures … we don’t know what variants of Covid have developed in China during the three years of their lockdown,” he told LBC radio. “Any divergence leaves us hostage to fortune. . . . The later you abandon any action, the less impact it will have.”
Singapore, a key travel hub, said on Friday it would take a “cautious” approach to increasing capacity as overseas travel resumes. The emergence of new and more dangerous variants and the potential burden on Singapore’s health system from sick travelers were its main concerns, its health ministry said.
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said it was “not yet necessary” to bring back mandatory tests for travelers arriving in the border-free Schengen area from China via Germany, but that the data about the Covid variants provided by Beijing were not reliable enough. “So we have to rely a lot on doing it ourselves,” for example by looking closely at individual flights, he said.
Chinese state media have called the return of testing requirements for travelers “discriminatory” and politically motivated in an attempt to undermine China’s reopening.
Liang Wannian, a senior Covid official, said on Thursday that China was playing an active role in global pathogen control and would alert the WHO “in a timely manner when a new variant is discovered or when the mutation causes a change in virulence or the transmissibility of the virus.” the Global Times reported.
With Reuters