On Tuesday, a senior World Health Organization official urged China to share more information about its COVID-19 situation, adding that it was “not unreasonable” for countries to take precautions.
According to information available to the WHO, “variants of the virus circulating in China have already been seen in Europe and elsewhere,” said Hans Kluge, head of the WHO regional office for Europe.
“We share the current view of the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) that the ongoing surge in cases in China will not significantly impact the COVID-19 epidemiological situation in the WHO European Region at this time,” he said.
“But we can’t be complacent,” warned Kluge, who oversees the 53-country region that stretches from Greenland in the northwest to the Russian Far East.
He acknowledged that China had shared information about the sequencing of the virus, but stressed that the WHO needed “detailed and regular information”, especially on local epidemiology and options.
“It makes perfect sense for countries to take precautionary measures to protect their populations while we wait for more detailed information to be circulated through public databases,” Kluge said.
He was referring to the requirements that a number of countries have for people arriving from China, including negative tests for COVID-19 and proof of full vaccination.
“For those countries in our region that are currently implementing such travel precautions, we call for them to be science-based, proportionate and non-discriminatory,” he said.
Less surveillance
Over the past year, many countries in Europe have significantly reduced their “surveillance capabilities” for COVID-19, Kluge said.
For the first five weeks of 2022, various information about 1.2 million cases was reported as part of the weekly surveillance data for the WHO and its partner, ECDC, he said.
However, in the last five weeks of 2023, that number has dropped to around 90,000 cases.
“We commend the European countries that support strict genome surveillance, including Denmark, France, Germany and the UK,” he said.
“Indeed, recent data from some of these countries indicates a growing presence of a new recombinant XBB.1.5 virus that is already spreading rapidly across the US,” he added.
Kluge said health authorities are picking up on XBB.1.5. various cases in the region “in small but growing numbers”.
“After three long years of a pandemic, with many countries struggling with overburdened health systems, shortages of essential medicines and depleted medical workforce, we cannot afford to put more pressure on our health care system,” he stressed.
