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Covid News Live Updates: U.S. President Joe Biden raised concern about China’s handling of its COVID-19 outbreak hours after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said China was under-reporting deaths from the disease. The United States is one of more than a dozen nations that have imposed restrictions on travellers from China since it scrapped stringent COVID controls last month that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.Global health officials are now trying to get to grips with an outbreak that is filling hospitals and overwhelming some funeral homes, at odds with China’s low official virus death toll. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, told a media briefing on Wednesday that current numbers being published from China under-represent hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and deaths. Speaking hours later, Biden said that he was concerned about how China was handling the outbreak.”They’re very sensitive … when we suggest they haven’t been that forthcoming,” he told reporters while on a visit to Kentucky. The comments from the WHO on the lack of data were some of the most critical to date and could yield a response from Beijing when it holds its regular foreign ministry press briefing later on Thursday.There was no immediate coverage of the WHO’s remarks in Chinese state media on Thursday. In previous statements, China’s government has played down the severity of the situation.The state-run Global Times said in an article on Wednesday that COVID infections had peaked in several major cities including the capital, Beijing, citing interviews with doctors in major hospitals. China reported one new COVID-19 death in the mainland for Wednesday, compared with five a day earlier, bringing its official death toll to 5,259.
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Covid News Live: WHO worried about surge of Covid in China amid lack of information
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency recently met with Chinese officials to underline the importance of sharing more details about Covid-19 issues including hospitalization rates and genetic sequences, even as the pandemic continues to recede globally since it began in late 2019.
Covid News Live: Four US returnees to Bengal had BF.7 variant of Covid, recovered
Four people from Bengal – three of them from the same family – tested positive to the BF.7 sub-variant of Omicron, which is primarily being held responsible for the recent surge in several countries, especially China, genome-sequencing has revealed. Each of these four people had a history of foreign travel, and had returned to Kolkata in the first week of December. All of them are now negative, none of them required hospital care and none of their close contacts tested positive, health department sources said. More reassuringly, none of them had severe symptoms, and had only gone for voluntary testing after they got mild symptoms like cold, cough, fever and a sore throat.
Covid News Live: EU ‘strongly’ urges Covid testing for arrivals from China
European Union (EU) officials are “strongly” recommending that all member states insist on negative Covid-19 tests from Chinese arrivals before they travel.Wednesday’s recommendation on negative tests came from the EU’s Integrated Political Crisis Response group (IPCR), a body made up of officials from the bloc’s 27 governments, reports the BBC.France, Spain and Italy have already introduced testing, but others, such as Germany, had been monitoring the situation.England, outside the EU, requires pre-flight testing on China arrivals from Thursday.
Covid News: Xi focussing on economy, leaves citizens in lurch amid Covid spike
China’s sudden announcement of relaxing the ‘zero-Covid’ is because President Xi Jinping believed that this policy was weakening the economy excessively, James Stent writes in Nikkei Asia. According to the author, the Communist Party realized that major economic and social distress would fracture the social contract if the country remains under the zero covid policy. And as a result, the ‘zero-Covid’ policy was jettisoned.
Covid News: Toyota chief tests positive for COVID, cancels business event attendance, reports Reuters
Toyota Motor Corp President Akio Toyoda has tested positive for COVID-19 and will be absent from a series of New Year events to be held by Japanese business lobbies on Thursday, a company spokesperson said. Toyoda had been due at events in Tokyo hosted by Japan’s top trade organisations where business and political leaders including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will be in attendance. The spokesperson said Toyoda gets tested regularly for the coronavirus and declined to comment on his symptoms.
China Covid News: China under-representing true impact of Covid, says WHO
- The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that China is “under-representing the true impact” of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, especially the exact number of deaths. In a statement on Wednesday, Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said: “We believe that definition (of a Covid death) is too narrow,” the BBC reported.
- China’s figures “under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths”, he added.Amidst the ongoing outbreak, China has stopped publishing the single-day tallies for Covid-19 cases and deaths. In December 2022, the country changed the criteria for what constitutes a Covid death, meaning only those who die of respiratory illnesses are counted.
Covid News Live: China’s People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, sought to rally worried citizens for what it called a “final victory” over Covid-19, rebutting criticism of its policy of strict isolation that triggered rare protests last year.
Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, told a media briefing that current numbers being published from China under-represent hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and “particularly in terms of death.”
The UN agency was releasing data provided by the Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a day after WHO officials met Chinese scientists. China has been reporting daily Covid deaths in single figures
Man tests Covid positive in Agra after returning from US, sample sent for genome sequencing
A 34-year-old resident of Dayalbagh in Agra, who returned from the US last week, has tested positive for coronavirus. He is a student in the US and reached Agra after taking a connecting flight from Delhi on December 30. Suffering from a bad throat, the man went for a Coivid-19 checkup at a private lab on January 3. The lab alerted the health department about the sample of the man being tested Covid-19 positive following an antigen test. The RT-PCR test conducted by the health department confirmed the infection on Wednesday. The health department is closely monitoring his health.
Rajasthan man with Omicron’s XBB.1.5 variant had returned from USA
The Rajasthan man who tested positive for Omicron’s XBB.1.5 variant is currently residing in Jaipur’s Sodala. The 21-year-old is a student who was studying in the US and returned on December 19 and tested positive for Covid-19 on December 23.
Four US returnees to Bengal had BF.7 variant of Covid, recovered
Four people from Bengal – three of them from the same family – tested positive to the BF.7 sub-variant of Omicron, which is primarily being held responsible for the recent surge in several countries, especially China, genome-sequencing has revealed. Each of these four people had a history of foreign travel, and had returned to Kolkata in the first week of December. All of them are now negative, none of them required hospital care and none of their close contacts tested positive, health department sources said. More reassuringly, none of them had severe symptoms, and had only gone for voluntary testing after they got mild symptoms like cold, cough, fever and a sore throat.
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