A medical worker administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a senior resident in Hufeng village of Wenchang, South China's Hainan province, Dec 22, 2022. (PHOTO / XINHUA)
After China made major adjustments to its prevention and control policy, overseas reports about that have been full of schadenfreude, employing such terms as "failure" or "crisis" to describe the recent surge in infections in the country.
But that is a false assessment of the situation, and simply reveals their animosity toward China.
What they fail to take note of is the fact that life in an increasing number of cities is returning to normal. The number of serious cases has remained manageable, and many of those infected have recovered after a few days.
It is natural that there should be a surge of infections in the country after the lifting of mobility restrictions given the transmissibility of the Omicron strain of the novel coronavirus.
There is no denying that what the country did in its response to COVID-19 over the past three years has been a success. Despite having the world's largest population, the death toll from the virus is among the lowest, and economic activities had been maintained, albeit to varying extents.
The Chinese government implemented the dynamic zero-COVID policy because it places people's lives above everything and considers it the top priority to keep people safe from the virus.
It adjusted the policy more than a month ago because the Omicron variant, though much more transmissible, is much less pathogenic than the previous variants of the virus. It is also because the majority of the population has been vaccinated, which will prevent many infections from developing into serious cases.
The fact that life has begun to return to normal in more and more cities has verified it was the right time to adjust the COVID-19 policy. It is good to see governments at various levels are taking concrete measures to ensure the supply of medicines and health services, and it is clear they were well aware of what would occur after the policy shift and that the focus is still on saving lives.
There are media outlets in the West that have no qualms about speaking ill of whatever the Chinese government does. The dynamic zero-COVID policy, which was meant to save lives and which indeed kept the pandemic at bay for more than three years, was described as prohibiting people's freedom.
Now amid the surge of infections, a natural result of the scientifically determined adjustment in policy, they are only too happy to describe it as a "crisis" or "failure" of China's COVID-19 response, belying the facts.
In the eyes of these Western media, nothing China does can be right. It is the bias they harbor against China that pulls the wool over their eyes.
The pandemic has entered a new stage, and it is time to fully fire up the country's economic engine, but China will continue to focus on a science-based fight against the virus and continue to make saving lives the priority.