China handles COVID-19 pandemic 'very well,' says public health expert

GENEVA - China has managed to control the COVID-19 pandemic "very well" as the country is contributing to efforts in global vaccine development and the mass immunization of populations worldwide, an international public health expert has said.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) called it agile, aggressive and ambitious, the three characteristics of the way China dealt with the pandemic," Therese Hesketh, a professor of global health at the University College London (UCL), told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The professor, who is also the director of the Center for Global Health at China's Zhejiang University, recalled that she was actually in China from October through December last year, and at that time in China life had returned to normal and that "I had the experience of the post-COVID time."

"They had a very strong track-and-trace," which is "extremely efficient," keeping track of people's movements and closing borders, she said.

The expert also said that China has acted immediately to control the situation following the most recent emergence of some local outbreaks.

"In China things happen quickly. No one is sitting around deciding what to do, they just get on with it," she said.

"I think we can learn a lot about what China has done in terms of this outbreak, in terms of the control of any pandemic in the future," she said.