China offers support, assistance to India to combat rising COVID-19 cases

Beijing, April 22

China on Thursday offered to provide the necessary support and assistance to India to deal with the sharp increase in the COVID-19 cases in the country.

Asked about the spike in the coronavirus cases in India by the official Chinese media, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here that the COVID-19 “pandemic is a common enemy of all mankind that necessitates international solidarity and mutual assistance”.

“China takes note of the recent grave situation in India with a temporary shortage of anti-epidemic medical supplies,” he said.

“We stand ready to provide India with necessary support and assistance to get the epidemic under control,” he said.

China reported the first COVID-19 case in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and since then the deadly disease has snowballed into a pandemic, affecting more than 143,915,000 people and over 3,060,500 deaths worldwide.

According to Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker, the US alone has reported 31,862,987 cases and 569,404 deaths from the deadly virus.

The US has alleged that the COVID-19 may have emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) which is a P-4 bio lab, a charge strongly denied by China.

A team of WHO experts, which probed the origin of the coronavirus, concluded last month that “all hypotheses” included the allegation that COVID-19 could have emanated from a bio lab “remained open”.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while receiving the report of the international experts’ team which visited Wuhan, said on March 30 that “as far as the WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table”. PTI