Since the novel Coronavirus hit the Wuhan city in December 2019, China has been facing criticism for the way the CCP handled the outbreak at an initial stage. On Saturday, China's top disease control official said that public criticism over the initial outbreak was understandable. But at the same time, he also defended Beijing's response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Gao Fu, director of China's disease control and prevention center told media "With such a large epidemic in China and the world, it is very normal to receive criticism from the public" adding that "We accept them with humility." Along with the top critic of China, the U.S., Australia also criticized the Chinese government over a lack of transparency during the early stage of the Coronavirus outbreak in Hubei province but Beijing has labeled these allegations as "preposterous".
In response to global criticism
It should be mentioned that the top Chinese health expert, Gao said that country's disease control center needs to improve its epidemic reporting mechanism and address the severe talent drain in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak that killed thousands in the world. Despite some of the flaws that were revealed in Gao's agency during the epidemic, he said that China's response was "good" compared to other countries as the Asian country had to handle a "closed-book exam".
But till now the Chinese scientists are unable to reveal how the deadly SARS-CoV-2 was passed on to humans. In this case, Gao said he expects that the public can give scientists more time to understand this virus.
Coronavirus vaccine
As per Gao, scientists from all over the world are trying to find an effective vaccine for the COVID-19. At this point "China is negotiating with various countries on the cooperation of vaccine research and development," Gao said adding that "We are discussing at what point we need to bring in the competition via intellectual property protection to speed up the progress."
It should be mentioned that as per The Lancet, where the phase one clinical trial of China's vaccine was published, Professor Wei Chen who heads the study at the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology said that a single dose of the "new adenovirus type 5 vectored COVID-19 (Ad5-nCoV) vaccine produces virus-specific antibodies and T cells in 14 days, making it a potential candidate for further investigation." But the full result of the vaccine trial is expected to be published in the next six months.
Another fact which cannot be ignored is China noticed a sharp fall in locally transmitted COVID-19 cases since March as major restrictions on people's movement helped it to control the epidemic in many parts of the country.
However, in May, when a new cluster emerged in the initial epicenter of the outbreak, Wuhan, the local authorities decided to test the whole population of the city and introduced new restrictions as well as lockdown measures in Jilin province after officials noticed a surge in new cases. The number of confirmed cases in China so far stood at 82,971 with 4,634 deaths.
