China’s actions make the world safer: WHO chief
By Li Lin, Kang Pu
China is not only protecting the lives and health of its own people, but also showing a strong sense of responsibility for global public health security, said Chinese President Xi Jinping on a phone call with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Feb. 18.
China is a responsible country. It has the confidence, capacity and determination to win this battle against the epidemic by the unity of its people, its institutional strength in concentrating resources for major undertakings, as well as its strong material and technological capacities and rich experience.
By taking powerful measures of epidemic prevention and control, China has successfully avoided further spread of the novel coronavirus in the rest of the world.
The timely epidemic information released by China was a major contribution made by the country. Since the onset of the epidemic, Chinese scientists have raced against the clock and achieved quick identification of the pathogens, and shared the sequencing with the World Health Organization (WHO).
They published the whole genome sequence in open knowledge bases, providing free access for global scientific researchers, which has won valuable time for the international community to prepare diagnostic tools to test cases and take further steps.
Besides, the country pays high attention on the epidemic development in other countries. Through bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, it has maintained close communication and strengthened cooperation with various countries to make all-out efforts to combat the epidemic.
China’s efforts effectively curbed the wider spread of the epidemic. In the country, prevention and control policies were implemented synchronously, no matter in remote villages or urban communities. Besides, both modern technologies and conventional methods were applied to better suit different situations. These policies have all been strictly implemented at various levels, from central government to primary-level communities.
Thanks to these efforts, positive results in epidemic prevention and control have been achieved in recent days. The epicenter Hubei province is seeing a declining number of new confirmed cases, and that outside the province has been falling for 15 consecutive days. Such performance is noteworthy as it was achieved when enterprises across the country were gradually resuming production.
China requested all travel agencies and online tour operators across the country to suspend group tours and flight & hotel packages, forcefully cutting the spread of the virus and panic to the rest of the world.
This was a hard choice for China, especially when more and more Chinese are joining outbound trips during the Spring Festival holiday these years. Over 7 million overseas trips were made by Chinese tourists during the 7-day holiday last year.
China’s measures have been fully recognized and highly commended by WHO and many countries. Compared with Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, the rest of the world is safer, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that China has offered a “window of opportunity” for the world, and the actions of the country are making the world safer.
Macron expressed his high appreciation for China’s timely and vigorous efforts, as well as its high degree of openness and transparency. And UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also gave high evaluation on China’s comprehensive and effective efforts and timely sharing of information to curb the global spread of the virus.
Appendix:
China is on the frontline of the battle against the epidemic, and to curb epidemics calls for international cooperation, especially at this critical moment. That is why the WHO has reiterated the importance of avoiding overreaction.
In the era of globalization, the destinies and futures of countries around the world are closely related, and only cooperation can make the world safer, securer and more prosperous.
(Li Lin and Kang Pu are commentators of People’s Daily Overseas Edition.)
