India’s Covid-19 surge dashes hopes of world reopening at once: Chinese expert
- Shanghai doctor admits to changing his view, now believing countries will open ‘in a conditional way, within regions, rather than globally’
- China is imposing strict border measures to ensure coronavirus cases do not enter from neighbouring countries
“Our projection on the global epidemic would have been a bit more optimistic, but that time frame now looks like it may have to be extended,” Zhang said in an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television. “It looks like the world may open up in the future in a conditional way, within regions, rather than globally.”
An editorial published in medical journal The Lancet said Covid-19 deaths in India could potentially reach a “staggering” 1 million by August, citing an estimate by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research centre at the University of Washington.
Other countries have been sending humanitarian aid to India but Zhang said the help was limited and India still needed to count on itself to contain Covid-19.
“The prevention and control of an epidemic in a country or region depends on three main aspects: the ability of public health governance; the degree of cooperation among the residents; and whether the science and technology can keep up,” Zhang said, referring to the need for ample vaccination before outbreaks and prompt testing and isolation during outbreaks.
“It doesn’t mean the public health experts in India don’t know how [to contain the epidemic], but it can’t necessarily be achieved. We can only hope, pray or wish that Indian people can soon overcome the hurdle.”
India’s coronavirus patients journey to find oxygen supplies, hospital beds
Respiratory diseases expert Zhong Nanshan called on China to remain vigilant even though it had almost eliminated locally transmitted Covid-19.
“More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic China, as the world’s most populous country, has withstood the test of the first phase of the pandemic, but we mustn’t ignore that the global epidemic situation is still very serious,” Zhong said via a recorded video message in a hospital management conference in Guangzhou on Saturday.
“The current vaccination rate in China is still not high and far from what is needed to achieve universal immunisation, so we still need to pay great attention to preventing the risk of importing the epidemic.”
In an interview with People’s Daily, Li Lanjuan, a prominent infectious diseases expert at Zhejiang University school of medicine, said: “Our country has a large population, long borders and a high degree of openness with people entering China from overseas all the time, so we still have to keep up epidemic prevention at the borders and never let down our guard.”
As West opens up, Asia’s ‘zero-Covid’ economies face hermit risk
Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi last week inspected police stations and border control points in Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and urged officials to step up border defence and control to prevent Covid-19 being imported.
On Saturday, the southern region of Guangxi introduced specific measures for people returning from India by adding seven additional nucleic tests on top of the required 21 days of quarantine to guard the “southern gate of China”.
