The World Health Organization on Friday said it was “pleased” that China is relaxing some of the strict COVID-19 measures that spurred protests over the weekend and into the week. “We’re pleased to learn that the Chinese authorities are adjusting their current strategies and really tried to calibrate now the control measures that they need for this virus with the lives, the livelihoods and the human rights of people in communities,” WHO’s Mike Ryan said at a press conference on Friday.
Ryan said that the omicron variant’s transmissibility makes it particularly difficult to contain, which is the goal of China’s “zero COVID” approach. “When you can’t stop a fire, you get the people in danger out of the way,” Ryan said. “And the way to get people out of the way of the fire in this case is to vaccinate people.”
Ryan’s comments come after several major cities in China eased their local coronavirus mitigation measures after they spurred one of the biggest displays of defiance against the Chinese Communist Party in decades.Following the protests, officials this week gave the most concrete signs yet that they could relax the country’s overall “zero COVID” strategy, which aims to isolate every coronavirus case to prevent transmission and has forced residents into months-long lockdowns.