By Nelson Manneh
The Ambassador of The People’s Republic of China in the Gambia H.E. Ambassador Ma Jianchun has told journalists in a recent press briefing that over 11,062 coronavirus patients in China, have regained their health and have been discharged from hospital and that the number of new confirmed cases outside the epicenter Hubei province has significantly decreased in the past two weeks.
H.E. Ambassador Ma Jianchun made these statements on Monday February 17th 2020 during a press briefing he had with the country’s media personnel at the Chinese Embassy in Bijilo.
The Chinese Ambassador said his home country is at war against the novel pneumonia virus and felt deeply saddened by the deaths of those who lost their lives due to the outbreak.
The Chinese Ambassador said his country is on the winning side of this war, as positive developments have been taking place and expresses the belief that they are not far from the end of the struggle.
“The whole thing started in December 2019 when a few people were diagnosed with pneumonia caused by unknown factors in Wuhan, state capital of China’s Hubei Province. The disease was later proven to be fairly infectious and drew people’s attention,” he told journalists.
The Chinese Ambassador said at the end of the same month, China’s National Health Commission sent experts to Wuhan to handle the disease and was later found that this type of pneumonia has a long incubation period which won its time to transmit from unconscious patients to more people before, before being realized; that Wuhan is at the geographic center of China’s national railway grid when the outbreak took place just prior to the Chinese New Year; that this is a time when domestic traffic volumes rise to its peak making the disease to spread to almost all provinces and major cities in China; that as more people were diagnosed with the disease in January 2020, stronger measures began to be taken to understand and control the outbreak.
“In the first week of 2020, Chinese experts found out that the disease was caused by a new type of coronavirus. Another week later they completed genetic sequencing of the virus and shared the data with the international community,” he asserted.
The Chinese Ambassador asserted that under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Government attaches utmost importance to the containment of the outbreak.
“We built a nationwide prevention and control system and carried out series of effective measures step by step, to contain the outbreak. I would like to outline these multifaceted measures in mainly four aspects,” he noted.
The Ambassador of The People’s Republic of China said more than 80% of all infected people are within Hubei province and among them, over two thirds are in Wuhan City which is a metropolis with over ten million residents.
“To complement Wuhan’s efforts in providing medical services to the suddenly increased number of patients, 217 medical teams and over 25,000 medical staff from across the nation including many military medical personnel, have been mobilized to Wuhan and other seriously affected places in Hubei province. Abundant medical supplies including masks, protective suits and safety goggles have been transported to the epicenter of the outbreak as well,” he noted; that two prefabricated emergency Hospitals have been built on the outskirts of Wuhan City within half a month to add 2,600 beds to the City’s admission capacity. He said makeshift Hospitals have also been set up in public indoor stadiums in Wuhan, to largely increase the City’s capacity of accommodating patients.
“Besides these measures and in line with instructions from the Central Government, nineteen Chinese provinces have been tasked to provide comprehensive assistance to combat the outbreak to nineteen most seriously affected Cities of Hubei Province, in a one-on-one situation. A national expert team has also been established to push forward scientific research on the novel coronavirus to help more effectively in controlling the outbreak and to treat patients,” he asserted.
The Chinese Ambassador concluded that with all the material and human resources put in place, Hubei province has completed the testing and confirmation of all accumulated suspected cases and is now focusing on treating patients.
