China admitted on Saturday May 9 that the Covid-19 had revealed " gaps " in its health care and infectious disease prevention system, remarks which come against the backdrop of criticism of US President Donald Trump.
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The country was the first affected by the epidemic at the end of 2019. The big city of Wuhan (center), where the new coronavirus was detected, had been particularly bruised. The start of the crisis was hard: caregivers faced with an illness then unknown, overloaded hospitals forced to refuse patients, unavailable tests, undetected patients or lack of equipment.
Several Wuhan doctors who had raised the alarm about the appearance of a new virus had also been questioned by the police and accused of spreading " rumors ".
" The fight against the Covid-19 epidemic has been a great test for the country's system and governance capacity ," said Chinese vice minister Li Bin Li Bin on Saturday. " It also revealed that China still has gaps in its systems and mechanisms for preventing and controlling major epidemics and in its public health system, " he said at a press conference in Beijing.
Global response
President Xi Jinping had already used the same vocabulary in February. But the remarks on Saturday come at a time when the United States accuses Beijing of having concealed information and having mismanaged the crisis.
" It could have been stopped in China, " Donald Trump said this week, speaking of the epidemic.
Beijing says it quickly shared all the data it had with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other countries. The Deputy Minister of Health spoke of several avenues for improving the Chinese health system, including the creation of a “ centralized, unified and efficient command ”.
He also mentioned a better use of artificial intelligence and big data to anticipate epidemics. Beijing said Friday it supports the creation of a commission under the aegis of the WHO to evaluate " the global response " to Covid-19, but only " after the end of the epidemic ".