by Bernard Orr
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Chinese state media have downplayed the scale of the COVID-19 outbreak seen in China in the wake of the recent lifting of restrictions, as local specialists are due to take stock in the day with the World Health Organization (WHO), which hopes to obtain precise information on the epidemiological situation and the evolution of the virus.
The People’s Daily, the official press organ of the Chinese Communist Party, relays in its Tuesday edition testimony from Chinese experts suggesting that the majority of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus currently develop only relatively mild forms of COVID-19.
“Severe and critical forms of the disease represent 3% to 4% of infected patients currently admitted to dedicated hospitals in Beijing,” said Tong Zhaohui, vice president of Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, quoted by the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Kang Yan, head of West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University, said that in the past three weeks, a total of 46 patients have been hospitalized in intensive care, about 1 percent. symptomatic infections.
But testimonies on the ground contradict these statements, reporting for two weeks of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral services.
In Shanghai, the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital was overflowing with patients, mostly elderly people, on Tuesday, a Reuters reporter said.
Some, infused, were lying on stretchers and provided with blankets while dozens of others waited around waiting to see a doctor, without it being possible to know the proportion of patients suffering from COVID-19.
DATA FAULT
The abandonment of the “zero COVID-19” policy in early December under the pressure of growing popular protest in China led to an explosion of contaminations, raising fears in particular of the appearance of new variants.
The upcoming lifting, on January 8, of restrictions on international travel from China, therefore prompted several countries last week – including France – to reinstate border health control measures for travelers arriving from China.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry ruled on Tuesday that these provisions were “simply unreasonable” and were based on “no scientific basis”.
“We are ready to improve our communication with the world,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told reporters on Tuesday.
“But we are resolutely opposed to attempts to manipulate epidemic prevention and control measures for political purposes, and we will take adequate measures in different situations on the principle of reciprocity,” she said.
While the sincerity of the epidemiological data provided by China since the start of the epidemic is already the subject of many reservations (with a total of less than 5,300 deaths declared since the end of 2019, against nearly 158,000 in France, for example) , the Chinese National Health Commission announced at the end of December that it was stopping the publication of daily epidemiological reports of contaminations and deaths, without giving an explanation.
The WHO has repeatedly called on Chinese health authorities in recent days to regularly share accurate and real-time information on the virus circulation and epidemic situation, including the toll of hospitalizations, deaths and the status of vaccination coverage. .
The UN organization notably invited Chinese scientists to present detailed data on the genome sequencing of viral strains currently circulating in the country, during a meeting of its COVID-19 Technical Advisory Group scheduled for Tuesday afternoon ( time of Geneva, where the organization is based).
But these calls for transparency may not be heard any more than the previous ones, according to experts.
“I don’t think China will be very sincere in sharing information,” said Alfred Wu, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the University of Singapore.
“They will either prefer not to share (this information) or say that nothing happened, or nothing new. In my opinion, one can assume that there is nothing new (… ) but the fundamental problem is that the question of China’s transparency persists,” he added. (Report Beijing and Shanghai offices, with the contribution of Farah Master in Hong Kong and Emma Farge in Geneva; written by Marius Zaharia, French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Kate Entringer)