Top leaders in China on Friday declared what they described as a ‘decisive victory’ over COVID-19, stressing its efforts led to more than 200 million people getting medical treatment and the country having the world’s lowest fatality rate.
‘With continuous efforts to optimise COVID-19 prevention and control measures since November 2022, China’s COVID-19 response has made a smooth transition in a relatively short time,’ China’s Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) remarked in a meeting on Thursday.
‘A major decisive victory in epidemic prevention and control has been achieved.’
Nearly 800,000 severe cases received proper treatment, but leaders cautioned that while the epidemic situation continues to improve in China, the virus is still spreading globally and continues to mutate, according to state media.
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The meeting stressed that China will increase the vaccination rate for the elderly, and strengthen the supply and production of medical goods.
The PSC, China’s most powerful leadership body, urged all localities and departments to strengthen the medical service system, according to the report from Xinhua.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that in December, China dismantled its almost three-year strict policies following historic protests against the government’s tough anti-virus curbs. The U-turn unleashed COVID-19 on a population of 1.4 billion that had been largely shielded from the disease since it emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019.
Scant data from the country on deaths and hospitalisations as the surge swept across the country led many countries to implement curbs against Chinese travellers entering their countries, drawing the ire of the Chinese government.
For months, many nations and the World Health Organization had conjectured that China was underreporting deaths.
The government recently stated that the COVID situation was at a ‘low level’ following the holidays, despite growing concerns that the enormous migration of travellers around the Lunar New Year would result in an explosion of cases.
Nonetheless, it was extremely expensive to keep the virus under control.
According to annual budget estimates from local governments, Chinese provinces spent at least 352 billion yuan ($51.6 billion) on COVID-19 containment in 2022, placing additional burden on provincial finances in a year of sluggish economic growth.