Sharjah24 – AFP: China's flagship zero-Covid strategy to defeat the pandemic is unsustainable, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, adding that it had told Beijing so and called for a policy shift.
China has imposed draconian measures, trapping most of Shanghai's 25 million people at home for weeks as the country combats its worst outbreak since the pandemic began.
The Shanghai lockdown has caused outrage and rare protest in the last major economy still glued to a zero-Covid policy, while movement in the capital Beijing has been slowly restricted.
"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," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.
"We have discussed about this issue with Chinese experts and we indicated that the approach will not be sustainable.
"Transiting into another strategy will be very important."
There is a pressing political dynamic to China's virus response, with President Xi Jinping pegging the legitimacy of his leadership on protecting Chinese lives from Covid.
Xi has doubled down on the zero-Covid approach, despite mounting public frustration.
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