Jakarta –
Many hospitals in China appear to be full amid worries about a new wave of Covid-19 sweeping the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
WHO Emergencies Manager Dr. Michael Ryan said the intensive care unit (ICU) was busy even as government officials said the number of cases was “relatively low”.
Chinese data shows no one died of Covid on Wednesday (21/12) but there are doubts about the true impact of the disease.
In recent days many hospitals in Beijing and other cities have started to fill up as the latest wave of Covid hits China.
Since 2020, China has imposed tough health restrictions as part of its zero Covid policy.
However, the government ended most of the measures two weeks ago after unprecedented protests against tight controls.
Since then the number of cases has soared, raising fears of a high death toll among the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable.
Despite the rise in cases, official figures show just five people died from Covid on Tuesday and two people on Monday.
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This led WHO emergencies chief Dr Ryan to urge China to provide more information on the latest outbreak of the virus.
He said: “In China, what has been reported is a relatively low number of ICU cases, but anecdotally the ICUs are full.
“We have been saying for weeks that this highly contagious virus will be very difficult to stop completely, only with public health and social measures.”
Speaking at his weekly press conference in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned about the situation developing in China”.
He asked for specific data on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.
Dr Ryan added that “vaccination is an exit strategy” for the coronavirus outbreak.
China has developed and manufactured its own vaccine, which has been shown to be less effective at protecting people from severe Covid illness and death than the mRNA vaccines used in most countries around the world.
dr. Ryan arrives as the German government announced Wednesday that it has shipped its first batch of BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to China.
EPA Chancellor Olaf Scholz (L) is calling for the German-made BioNTech vaccine to be made available free of charge to Chinese citizens.
The German vaccine will initially be supplied to expats in China, estimated to number around 20,000.
This is the first foreign Covid-19 vaccine shipped to China, though no details on the timing or size of the shipment have been released.
During a visit to Beijing last month, Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged that the vaccine also be made available free of charge to Chinese citizens.
Watch the video “WHO analysis on why Covid-19 is raging in China again”:
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