The United States is concerned that China’s out-of-control Covid-19 outbreak could lead to new variants of the virus as the world’s most populous nation continues to deal with the consequences of relaxing “Covid Zero” rules that had previously contained the pandemic.
Ned Price, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, stated in a press briefing on Monday that the current outbreak in China must be addressed. We are aware that any time a virus is propagating in the wild, it has the potential to mutate and represent a global threat to humanity.
After years of asserting that the Communist Party handled the virus better than the West, Chinese cities are experiencing an influx of Covid-19 cases, and there are mounting worries that the government is concealing the true toll of the virus. On Monday, police and security guards pushed back media from cremation in Beijing.
According to NDTV, a Chinese Embassy official in Washington did not immediately react to a request for comment on Price’s statements. As a result of the government’s decision to relax quarantine and isolation rules that had mostly shielded China’s 1.4 billion people from the worst effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the outbreak has intensified.
China’s U-turn on Covid-19 followed protests in multiple Chinese cities in late November when the containment efforts were blamed for deaths caused by a fire in the country’s western Xinjiang region.
Health officials, notably the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, have been on the watch for new Covid-19 varieties, such as delta and omicron, as the virus spreads throughout the world. According to the CDC, new mutations “enable the virus to spread more quickly or render it resistant to treatments or immunizations.”
The United States is sending a group lead by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing at the start of the new year in the hopes that China can bring the current Covid-19 outbreak under control, Price said, in part because any further damage to the Asian nation may undermine the world economy.
Given the scale of China’s GDP, the rest of the globe is concerned about the impact of the virus. It is beneficial not just for China to have a stronger position vis-à-vis Covid but also for the rest of the globe.
