China’s state media played down the intensity of a COVID-19 infection

Key Takeaways:

• Before a World Health Organization briefing on Tuesday, its experts hoped for a “detailed discussion” on the virus’ evolution.
• Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said to Beijing reporters, “We are willing to improve communication with the world.
• After reporting three more COVID deaths on Monday, China has tallied 5,253 deaths since the pandemic began.

Before a Tuesday briefing by its experts to the World Health Organization, hoping for a “detailed discussion” on the evolvement of the virus, state media in China downplayed the severity of a surge in COVID-19 infections.

The reliability of China’s case and mortality data has come under rising scrutiny domestically and internationally in the wake of the country’s abrupt U-turn on COVID controls on December 7.

China’s foreign ministry referred to some countries’ restrictions on travel entry as “simply unreasonable” and claimed they “lacked scientific basis.”

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, spokeswoman for the foreign ministry Mao Ning said, “We are willing to improve communication with the world.

“However, we will take corresponding measures in various circumstances by the principle of reciprocity and are vehemently opposed to attempts to modify the epidemic prevention and also control measures for political purposes.”

Following protests that represented the strongest display of public defiance during President Xi Jinping’s decade in office and coincided with the economy’s slowest growth in nearly half a century, China abandoned its “zero-COVID” policy.

Funeral homes have reported rising service demand as the virus spreads unchecked. International health experts estimate that China will experience at least one million fatalities this year.

China has officially recorded 5,253 deaths since the pandemic’s start after reporting three additional COVID deaths on Monday.

Chinese experts were quoted as saying on Tuesday by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, that the virus’s illness was generally mild for most people.

According to Tong Zhaohui, vice president of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, “severe and critical diseases account for 3% to 4% of infected people currently admitted to designated hospitals in Beijing.”

In the previous three weeks, 46 patients—or roughly 1% of symptomatic infections—had been admitted to intensive care units, according to Kang Yan, director of West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University.

According to a Reuters witness, the emergency room at the Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai was jam-packed with patients on Tuesday.

While dozens of people waited to see a doctor, some received IV treatment in beds in the hallway. How many people had COVID wasn’t immediately clear.

Source from: Yahoo