Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: February15,2022
By Staff Writer
Organizing and holding Beijing 2022 winter Olympic Games during COVID-19 pandemic was not an easy job for China, regarding the safety of players from all over the world from contamination of the COVID-19 virus. U.S administration on a number of occasions pointed accusing fingers at China as responsible the pandemic simply because the first cases were reported from China.
The U. S administration wasted a lot of valuable time that would have been focused on fighting the pandemic, but instead resorted to blame games and name calling. Today, the U.S has had a total of more than 77million COVID-19 infections, with a death toll of over 940,000 and expected to run into one million soon if nothing is done to reverse the trend. For China, the total number of infections stands at 107,000, while the death toll is slightly more than 4,600.
The statistics above show that China’s policy of “zero Covid” has paid off in protecting Chinese citizens from infections and deaths caused by COVID-19 virus, bearing in mind that China has a population of more than 1.4billion, which is 4 times the population of the U.S.
Back to the Beijing 2022 winter Olympics, more stringent measures were put in place to ensure the safety of athletes and organizers. China’s new weapon against Covid-19, the “closed loop” is an innovation that the world can learn from when holding major events that require many people to be in one place at the same time and keep safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In order to ensure the safety of athletes the safety loop that begins at Beijing International airport during arrivals, to ground transport, hotels, checkpoints, Olympic venues and many others, has created a safe zone for the participants, enabling the games to go without fear, as if the world is experiencing a new normal. Daily testing and mobile telephone apps inform all participants on their health status with no stress.
Although U.S. authorities constantly blamed China over the COVID-19 pandemic, China has proved to have the most effective measures towards the fight against COVID-19 that have protected the lives of people. Additionally, the effective measures, resulted into quick resumption of economic activities, enabling China’s economy to grow at a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter in 2020, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
On January 27, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report to Congress which highlighted serious deficiencies in the capabilities to manage not only the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, but also to tackle other future potential pandemics as well as natural disasters and climate change challenges. The GAO report further notes that the Department of Health and Human Services has even failed to implement basic strategies like testing due to inadequate testing kits. This is unbelievably embarrassing to be happening in the richest country in the world.
In comparison on how the two countries- the U.S. and China have fared in the fight against COVID-19, political analysts opine that, the U.S. response to the pandemic has prioritized politics over the survival and wellbeing of the people, and that the pandemic has exposed the U.S systematic political and scientific challenges. The U.S media which would have advised policy makers on learning best practices from other countries including China in the fight against the pandemic, decided to play home politics by condemning “zero COVID” strategy, yet it is delivering impressive results for China.
As the world continues to enjoy the safe and splendid Olympic Games from Beijing, world athletes including those from U.S. can testify how safe they are against COVID-19 in China.
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