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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Lack of info on China’s COVID-19 surge stirs global concern

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875 days ago
20221229
A masked traveller arrives at the international flight check in counter at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. Moves by the U.S., Japan and others to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

A masked traveller arrives at the international flight check in counter at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. Moves by the U.S., Japan and others to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Moves by sev­er­al coun­tries to man­date COVID-19 tests for pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing from Chi­na re­flect glob­al con­cern that new vari­ants could emerge in its on­go­ing ex­plo­sive out­break — and that the gov­ern­ment may not in­form the rest of the world quick­ly enough. 

There have been no re­ports of new vari­ants to date, but Chi­na has been ac­cused of not be­ing forth­com­ing about the virus since it first sur­faced in the coun­try in late 2019. The wor­ry is that it may not be shar­ing da­ta now on any signs of evolv­ing strains that could spark fresh out­breaks else­where. 

The U.S., Japan, In­dia, South Ko­rea, Tai­wan and Italy have an­nounced test­ing re­quire­ments for pas­sen­gers from Chi­na. The U.S. cit­ed both the surge in in­fec­tions and what it said was a lack of in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing of the virus strains in the coun­try. 

Au­thor­i­ties in Tai­wan and Japan have ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cern. 

“Right now the pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion in Chi­na is not trans­par­ent,” Wang Pi-Sheng, the head of Tai­wan’s epi­dem­ic com­mand cen­ter, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. “We have a very lim­it­ed grasp on its in­for­ma­tion, and it’s not very ac­cu­rate.” 

The is­land will start test­ing every­one ar­riv­ing from Chi­na on Jan. 1, ahead of the ex­pect­ed re­turn of about 30,000 Tai­wanese for the Lu­nar New Year hol­i­day lat­er in the month. The new Japan­ese rules, which re­strict flights from main­land Chi­na, Hong Kong and Macao to des­ig­nat­ed air­ports be­gin­ning Fri­day, are al­ready dis­rupt­ing hol­i­day trav­el plans. 

Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son Wang Wen­bin not­ed Thurs­day that many coun­tries have not changed their poli­cies for trav­el­ers from Chi­na and said that any mea­sures should treat peo­ple from all coun­tries equal­ly. 

Every new in­fec­tion of­fers a chance for the coro­n­avirus to mu­tate, and it is spread­ing rapid­ly in Chi­na. Sci­en­tists can’t say whether that means the surge will un­leash a new mu­tant on the world — but they wor­ry that might hap­pen. 

Chi­nese health of­fi­cials have said the cur­rent out­break is be­ing dri­ven by ver­sions of the omi­cron vari­ant that have al­so been de­tect­ed else­where, and a sur­veil­lance sys­tem has been set up to iden­ti­fy any po­ten­tial­ly wor­ri­some new ver­sions of the virus. Wu Zun­y­ou, the chief epi­demi­ol­o­gist at Chi­na’s Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol, said Thurs­day that Chi­na has al­ways re­port­ed the virus strains it has found in a time­ly way. 

“We keep noth­ing se­cret,” he said. “All work is shared with the world.” 

Ger­man Health Min­istry spokesper­son Se­bas­t­ian Guelde said au­thor­i­ties there have “no in­di­ca­tion that a more dan­ger­ous vari­ant has de­vel­oped in this out­break in Chi­na,” but they are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion. The Eu­ro­pean Union is al­so as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion, though its ex­ec­u­tive branch not­ed that a preva­lent vari­ant in Chi­na is al­ready ac­tive in Eu­rope. 

More broad­ly, World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus has said the body needs more in­for­ma­tion on the sever­i­ty of the out­break in Chi­na, par­tic­u­lar­ly on hos­pi­tal and ICU ad­mis­sions, “in or­der to make a com­pre­hen­sive risk as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion on the ground.” 

Chi­na rolled back many of its tough pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions ear­li­er this month, al­low­ing the virus to spread rapid­ly in a coun­try that had seen rel­a­tive­ly few in­fec­tions since an ini­tial dev­as­tat­ing out­break in the city of Wuhan. Spi­ral­ing in­fec­tions have led to short­ages of cold med­i­cine, long lines at fever clin­ics, and at-ca­pac­i­ty emer­gency rooms turn­ing away pa­tients. Cre­ma­tions have risen sev­er­al-fold, with a re­quest from over­bur­dened fu­ner­al homes in one city for fam­i­lies to post­pone fu­ner­al ser­vices un­til next month. 

Chi­nese state me­dia has not re­port­ed the fall­out from the surge wide­ly and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have blamed West­ern me­dia for hyp­ing up the sit­u­a­tion. 

The glob­al con­cerns, tinged with anger, are a di­rect re­sult of the rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s sud­den ex­it from some of the world’s most strin­gent an­ti-virus poli­cies, said Miles Yu, di­rec­tor of the Chi­na Cen­ter at the Hud­son In­sti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank in Wash­ing­ton. 

“You can’t con­duct the lu­na­cy of ‘ze­ro-COVID’ lock­downs for such a long pe­ri­od of time … and then sud­den­ly un­leash a mul­ti­tude of the in­fect­ed from a caged Chi­na to the world,” risk­ing ma­jor out­breaks else­where, Yu said in an email. 

Dr. David Dowdy, an in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert at Johns Hop­kins Bloomberg School of Pub­lic Health, said the move by the U.S. may be more about in­creas­ing pres­sure on Chi­na to share more in­for­ma­tion than stop­ping a new vari­ant from en­ter­ing the coun­try. 

Chi­na has been ac­cused of mask­ing the virus sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try be­fore. An AP in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that the gov­ern­ment sat on the re­lease of ge­net­ic in­for­ma­tion about the virus for more than a week af­ter de­cod­ing it, frus­trat­ing WHO of­fi­cials. 

The gov­ern­ment al­so tight­ly con­trolled the dis­sem­i­na­tion of Chi­nese re­search on the virus, im­ped­ing co­op­er­a­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tists. 

Re­search in­to the ori­gins of the virus has al­so been stymied. A WHO ex­pert group said in a re­port this year that “key pieces of da­ta” were miss­ing on the how the pan­dem­ic be­gan and called for a more in-depth in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

___ 

Wu re­port­ed from Taipei, Tai­wan. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Geir Moul­son in Berlin, Car­la K. John­son in Seat­tle and Ka­nis Le­ung in Hong Kong and video pro­duc­er Liu Zheng in Bei­jing con­tributed. 

BEI­JING (AP) 

 

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