World Health Organisation ( WHO ) on Tuesday said that china’s zero covid policy to tackle the covid-19 outbreak is “unsustainable” and needs a shift in policy.
WHO asked Beijing to initiate a policy shift in order to tackle the surging caseload.
The statement from WHO comes when China is attempting to regulate Covid-19 outbreaks in Shanghai, Beijing and other provinces through lockdowns and mass testing.
“We don’t think that it is sustainable considering the behaviour of the virus,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing in Geneva late on Tuesday.
“When we talk about the zero-Covid strategy, we don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future,” Ghebreyesus said.
“We have discussed this issue with Chinese experts and we indicated that the approach will not be sustainable,” he said, adding, “transiting into another strategy will be very important.”
“We need to balance the control measures against the impact they have on society, the impact they have on the economy, and that’s not always an easy calibration,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan was quoted as saying by the news agency AFP.
