Omicron spread shows China got it right on Covid-19 strategy, top disease expert says
- Wuhan lockdown was landmark decisive move that drastically contained the spread of the coronavirus in China, Zhong Nanshan says
- Expert credits rapid testing and universal vaccination coverage, along with stringent controls with country’s success
02:17
U.K. breaks daily Covid-19 record as Omicron likely to become dominant strain in E.U. by mid-January
Covid-19 reached its peak in China during the first two weeks of the pandemic in January and February 2020 but subsided another two weeks later, with the country reporting more than 80,000 cases and a death rate of 4 per cent during that one-month period, Zhong said.
The total number of Chinese patients diagnosed with Covid-19 was about 120,000, he said.
“For some countries, their daily cases alone would exceed 100,000. We managed to keep the additional cases to only 40,000 over the past 20 months. This is stable and persistent [policy] that has allowed economic activity to resume as normal,” Zhong told the conference in the Guangdong provincial capital.
He also hailed China’s success in containing the coronavirus, attributing this to early identification, diagnosis, quarantine, immediate treatment and vaccination coverage.
