By Ulvi Hagverdi
Your commercial awareness dose
China is the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. The GDP of China has been growing significantly since 1999. The country’s tremendous efforts in developing its manufacturing sector and trading, followed by holding foreign national reserves has been remarkable. When the COVID-19 virus was first identified in China in November 2019, the economic growth slowed down when Wuhan entered a complete lockdown in late January 2020. Other provinces with increasing COVID cases were also locked-down, which quarantined more than 50 million people.
Foreigners and even families of diplomats departed to their homeland. Soon it became a global pandemic when the cases of coronavirus surfaced in other countries as well. International flights were open, and the people who were infected with coronavirus travelled without restrictions during the early days of virus-spread. According to the WHO statistics, there have been around 86,000 cases of COVID-19 in China. The United States has more than 13 million cases of COVID till now, and the United Kingdom has 1.6 million cases with a population much smaller than China. So how did China control the cases?
China experienced SARS at the beginning of the 21st century, which taught the country very significant lessons. The country took aggressive measures to contain the virus in Wuhan with a lock-down. Similarly, when the Qingdao city had increasing cases of COVID-19, the entire city of 10.92 million was tested for COVID-19 within 5 days. The biggest producer of masks and surgical gowns spiked its production in the early days of the pandemic, and the availability of masks was ensured to masses. The government had been stringent on wearing masks, and the citizens of China complied. The Chinese showed compliance by masking up so strongly that the little children when they went out in public had their masks on.
On the contrary, in the U.S Donald trump mocked Joe Biden for ‘wearing a mask all the time’ in October after the country had suffered a great deal because of the pandemic.
When it came to international travel, the country took strict measures. The number of flights was limited. and the international travellers were quarantined for 14 days at the government hotel facilities. Even the citizens of China criticized the government’s actions when the Chinese students were stranded in other countries and not being able to come home because of strict travel restrictions.
Moreover, the monitoring of COVID cases was also effective in limiting the contact of the virus. The government spent incessantly on healthcare facilities, medical equipment and ventilators, testing kits, and the expertise of frontline healthcare workers who handled the worst situations in the best possible way. The world started playing the blame-game when the spread of virus occurred round the globe in the early march. It was initially referred to as ‘Wuhan virus’ and ‘Chinese virus’ because it originated in the seafood market in Wuhan.
There have been many arguments in the news and on international platforms that China delayed informing WHO about the COVID situation. China has allegedly violated the IHR obligations according to some experts when it was reluctant in reporting the true number of cases in the country to the World Health Organisation. Wuhan entered lockdown on 23rd January, within the next 7 weeks number of infected individuals started soaring in Spain, France and the United States which made it clear that much damage had been done during December and January.
Later, mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that 5 million people had escaped Wuhan through international flights to different countries in those two months. Until now. China is doing what can be done to keep the infection rates low, but the country has turned a blind eye to what happens outside the borders. The widely accepted opinion in the absence of international laws for a pandemic is that every country is responsible for itself. Just like China contained the virus with tireless efforts and diligence, other countries should learn from China and adopt the measures that helped China lower the transmission of the virus.
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