DDHK.ORG - A new wave of COVID-19 in China has recently made the world anxious. Global health officials and experts outside China watched anxiously the COVID-19 spike this.
This is of course reasonable. World fear that the nation of 1,4 billion people is under-vaccinated and may not have the healthcare tools to treat a wave of disease that is expected to kill more than a million people by 2023.
As reported Time, some US and European officials are scrambling to figure out how to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis in China which they fear will hurt the global economy.
This crisis will also further constrain the company's supply chain, and spawn a new variant of the coronavirus of concern.
"We have stated that we stand ready to assist in any way deemed acceptable," said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday 20 December 2022.
Early preparation of healthcare systems, accurate and shared data collection, and open communication are all critical to fighting the mass infection of the coronavirus, say health experts from countries outside of China struggling through their own waves of COVID.
They say many of these elements appear to be lacking in China.
President Xi Jinping has long insisted that the country's one-party system is best suited to tackling this disease. He also emphasized that China's vaccine is superior to western vaccines, despite evidence to the contrary.
“China's vaccine nationalism is deeply linked to Xi's pride, and accepting Western aid would not only embarrass Xi, but would also undermine his oft-proclaimed narrative that China's model of governance is superior,” said Craig Singleton, deputy director of the China program at the Defenders of Democracy Foundation.
Behind the scenes, European and US officials held careful talks with their Chinese counterparts, while issuing deliberately worded public statements intended to make it clear that the decision rests with Beijing.
How to Handle COVID-19
Washington and Beijing officials discussed how to deal with COVID earlier this month in talks in China to prepare for a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken early next year, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week.
He declined to provide details, citing "sensitive diplomatic channels."
One potential area of Western aid involves whether China will receive BioNTech's latest mRNA vaccine designed to target a variant of the Omicron-related virus currently circulating, which many experts believe is more effective than the Chinese vaccine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed the issue during a visit to Beijing last month along with BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin.
However, the United States and other Western countries are not openly pushing China to accept Western-made mRNA vaccines, said White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told reporters on Thursday. "We are ready to help any country in the world with vaccines, treatments, whatever we can help," he said.
Beijing says "institutional advantage" will help it weather the epidemic without foreign help, and the estimated number of COVID deaths in China is still lower than the 1,1 million deaths in the US and 2,1 million in Europe. [DDHK News]
