China Reports Latest COVID Situation in Meeting with WHO

Patients lie on beds in a hallway in the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Staff
Patients lie on beds in a hallway in the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Staff
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China Reports Latest COVID Situation in Meeting with WHO

Patients lie on beds in a hallway in the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Staff
Patients lie on beds in a hallway in the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai, China January 3, 2023. REUTERS/Staff

Officials and experts from China on Thursday attended an online meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO), China's national health commission said in a statement.

During the meeting Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention officials and experts from Southeast University reported on China's latest COVID-19 prevention and control measures, its monitoring of mutated virus strains, vaccination efforts and the treatment of infections, the health commission said.

The WHO's emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts, some of the UN agency's most critical remarks to date.

China has played down the severity of the situation. The state-run Global Times wrote on Wednesday that COVID had peaked in Beijing and several cities, citing interviews with doctors.

China's CanSino Biologics Inc reported on Thursday "positive" interim data on its experimental COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccine in a mid-stage clinical trial.

The clinical study was to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity for adults aged 18 years and above, the pharmaceutical firm said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The vaccine, called CS-2034, was tested as a booster on people who had received three doses of an inactivated vaccine, it said. Such vaccines, like those made by Sinopharm and SinoVac, are the type used in China.

China has nine domestically-developed COVID vaccines approved for use, but none are based on the messenger RNA technology used in the shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The Chinese shots have also not been updated to target the highly infectious Omicron variant.

CanSino obtained approval to start the clinical trial on mRNA vaccine in April.



Putin Appoints Alexander Darchiev as Russia's New Ambassador to Washington

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
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Putin Appoints Alexander Darchiev as Russia's New Ambassador to Washington

Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 2025. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylyov/Pool via REUTERS

Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed senior veteran diplomat Alexander Darchiev as ambassador to the United States on Thursday, to lead a rapprochement with that has stunned Ukraine and Washington's European allies.
The Foreign Ministry said last week Washington had given it the green light at a meeting between Russian and US officials in Türkiye to appoint Darchiev, who now serves as head of the Foreign Ministry's North America department.
That six-hour meeting in Istanbul last Thursday, where the delegations worked to try to restore normal function of their embassies, was the latest sign of a thaw between the two countries, Reuters reported.
US President Donald Trump has upended previous policy on the war in Ukraine, opening up bilateral talks with Moscow and pausing military aid to Kyiv after clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House last week.
Moscow and Washington had been embroiled in a series of diplomatic rows
over staffing and embassy properties in recent years that Russia says has strained relations.
Russia has had no ambassador in Washington since last October when the previous envoy, Anatoly Antonov, left his post.

Darchiev, 64, has served two long spells in Russia's Washington embassy and was ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2021.