China

Chinese rush to renew passports as COVID border curbs lifted People joined long queues outside immigration offices in Beijing on Monday, eager to renew their passports after China dropped COVID border controls that had largely prevented its 1.4 billion residents from travelling for three years. Yew Lun Tian,Eduardo Baptista Reuters

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China 'under-representing' true impact of Covid outbreak, WHO says | CNN The World Health Organization has accused China of "under-representing" the severity of its Covid outbreak and criticized its "narrow" definition of what constitutes a Covid death, as top global health officials urge Beijing to share more data about the explosive spread. Simone McCarthy CNN

... WHO executive director for health emergencies Mike Ryan said the numbers released by China “under-represent the true impact of the disease” in terms of hospital and ICU admissions, as well as deaths.

COVID-19 enters 4th year with successes, but new threats CIDRAP

As the pandemic enters its fourth year, the world is in a better place with managing the disease but still faces threats from inequities for accessing tools to battle COVID-19, intense transmission in several countries, and the emergence of another highly transmissible Omicron subvariant, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

In a related development, the WHO today shared details about its virus evolution advisory group's assessment of viruses circulating in China and said the experts are also assessing the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, which is quickly becoming dominant in the United States.

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