The WHO yesterday appealed to China to keep releasing information about its wave of COVID-19 infections after Beijing on Saturday announced nearly 60,000 deaths since early last month, following weeks of complaints it was failing to tell the world what was happening.
The announcement was the first official death toll since the Chinese Communist Party abruptly dropped its “zero COVID-19” policy despite a surge in infections that flooded hospitals.
That left the WHO and other governments appealing for information, while Taiwan, the US, South Korea, Japan and others imposed controls on visitors from China.
Photo: REUTERS
The Chinese government said 5,503 people died of respiratory failure caused by COVID-19, and there were 54,435 fatalities from cancer, heart disease and other ailments combined with COVID-19 from Dec. 8 to Thursday.
The announcement “allows for a better understanding of the epidemiological situation,” a WHO statement said.
It said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus talked by telephone with Chinese National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei (馬曉偉).
Photo: EPA-EFE
The “WHO requested that this type of detailed information continued to be shared with us and the public,” the agency said.
The National Health Commission said only deaths in hospitals were counted, which means anyone who died at home would not be included. It gave no indication when or whether it might release updated numbers.
A Chinese health official said the “national emergency peak has passed,” based on an 83 percent decline in the daily number of people going to fever clinics from a high on Dec. 23.
The report would more than double China’s official COVID-19 death toll to 10,775 since the virus was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official toll, which excludes many fatalities that would be attributed to the virus in other countries.
Meanwhile, high-speed train service yesterday resumed between Hong Kong and mainland China.
China also reopened a border crossing with Myanmar that is vital to the Southeast Asian nation’s trade, after years of a pandemic-prompted closure.
COVID-19 shuttered the Muse-Ruili checkpoint — among Myanmar’s busiest — in April 2020.
However, a Burmese official said that “China only allowed us to export food and drink at the moment.”
ARRIVALS IN TAIWAN
In Taipei yesterday, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), who is the Central Epidemic Command Center’s (CECC) spokesman, said the center would continue to implement quarantine and other pandemic response measures for people arriving from China.
This would include testing and isolation for those who test positive, he said.
Meanwhile, 201 arrivals from China tested positive for COVID-19 at Taiwanese airports on Friday, CECC data showed.
With 2,461 people arriving and undergoing mandatory testing, the test positivity rate was 8.2 percent, the data showed.
Sixty-eight people arrived via ferry in Kinmen County from China that day and one tested positive, resulting in a test positivity rate of 1.5 percent, the data showed.
From Jan. 1 to Friday, 17,120 travelers arrived from China and 2,696 tested positive, resulting in a test positivity rate of 15.7 percent, it showed.
Additional reporting by Lin Hui-chin
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