Earlier today, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke with Minister Ma Xiaowei, who is in charge of China’s National Health Commission, about the COVID-19 situation in the country. WHO is glad that this meeting is happening and that information about the situation as a whole is being shared with the public.
Chinese officials told WHO and the press about a wide range of things, such as outpatient clinics, hospitalisations, patients who needed emergency care and critical care, and deaths in hospitals caused by COVID-19 infection.
WHO is looking at this data, which goes from the beginning of December 2022 to January 12, 2023.

This helps them understand the epidemiological situation and the effects of this wave in China better. WHO asked that we and the general public keep getting this kind of detailed information. WHO takes note of what the Chinese government is doing to improve clinical care for its people at all levels, even in critical care.
The overall epidemiology, which shows a fast and intense wave of disease caused by known sub-variants of Omicron and a greater clinical impact on older people and those with underlying conditions, is similar to waves of infection that have happened in other countries, as is the increased pressure on health services. The reported data show that the number of cases, hospitalisations, and people who need critical care are going down. WHO has asked for more information about how data changes over time by province.

Even though the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said that Omicron sublineages BA.5.2 and BF.7 are currently circulating, WHO is still asking for more sequences to be shared with open-access databases like GISAID so that deeper phylogenetic analyses can be done and technical groups working on virus evolution, clinical care, and other topics can continue to work together.
WHO will keep helping China by giving technical advice and support and by analysing what is going on. On the call today, Dr. Tedros also said again how important it is for China to work more closely with the WHO and be more open about how the COVID-19 pandemic started and how the recommendations in the report of the Strategic Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens should be carried out.