China has been struggling with the meteoric rise in coronavirus cases since the country relaxed its controversial zero Covid policy last month. The official Covid figures from China have become unreliable guide as less testing is being done across the country.
Jonathan Latham, British virologist and biologist as well as Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project said that Beijing is clearly not being open and transparent about Covid data. He believes that only accurate data can lead to good decisions in China and elsewhere.
“It would be great to have accurate information on Covid cases and deaths which can lead to good decisions in China and elsewhere. Good data would also test the theory that newer variants such as omicron have a lower inherent death rate,” the virologist told ANI.
“The pandemic response of authorities has generally been very poorly thought out and executed. It is doubtful that warnings from China would have made a difference, either today or back in 2019/2020. Even western warnings in late 2019 were ignored,” he added.
As per ANI reports, Jonathan has been studying the origins of Covid-19 and the early events in china, before and after the pandemic outbreak.
Speaking about the controversial China’s zero-covid policy, he further said it seems that China has lost control over the infection due to reduced vigilance.
“From afar it is difficult to be truly certain but it seems that china has lost the control over covid that it had for so long. Probably this is because the newer variants that have arrived are more infectious than those with which it dealt successfully in the past. Reduced vigilance in china likely also played a role too,” he said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday urged China’s health officials to regularly share ‘specific and real-time’ information on the Covid-19 situation in the country.
It has asked Chinese health officials to reveal more genetic sequencing data, as well as data on hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations.
The agency has also invited Chinese scientists to present detailed data on viral sequencing at its meeting of a technical advisory group scheduled for January 3.
Some countries including India, Japan, South Korea, United States, France, Italy, and Taiwan have all imposed Covid tests for travellers from China response of rising coronavirus cases in the country.
(With ANI inputs)
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