The ASEAN-China Special Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) was held on 20 February in Vientiane, Laos.
State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi briefed the meeting in his remarks on the progress China has made in fighting the epidemic. He said that under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the 1.4 billion Chinese people are united as one in fighting the virus. China has adopted the most comprehensive, rigorous and thorough measures and established an effective prevention and control system, which has lowered the epidemic peak, weakened its intensity and brought it under control. China’s prevention and control measures have been proved to be highly effective. As WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out, China has taken strong measures to contain the outbreak within the country and prevented its spread to other parts of the world. China is not only protecting the Chinese people, but also safeguarding people around the world by gaining time for global responses.
To date, new confirmed cases in China outside Hubei have declined for 16 consecutive days, among which 13 provinces report no new confirmed cases. Confirmed cases in Hubei have dropped for 7 days in a row and there was a sharp decrease yesterday compared with the day before. Cured cases are on a steady rise. As of yesterday, 16,168 patients had been cured and discharged from hospital. The cure rate is increasing, and there is a good turnaround in Hubei, especially in Wuhan. These figures show that the epidemic is controllable and curable.
From a global perspective, there are 25 affected countries, which is far lower than the number during the H1N1 outbreak back in 2009. More than 200 affected countries and regions reported cases at that time. Of all COVID-19 cases, only around 1% are outside China while 99% are in China. This shows that the measures China has taken have been effective, and that China has lived up to its responsibility as a major country.
We firmly believe that, with the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China and China’s strong mobilization capability, its institutional advantage for mobilizing resources nationwide and its unprecedented overall national strength, China has the capacity and determination to prevail over the epidemic at an early date.