By Landing Colley
Chinese ambassador to The Gambian has said no Gambian is infected with the deadly coronavirus. Reports say about 70,640 cases have been confirmed.
“The number of confirmed infection cases in China as of this morning has reached 70,640 which Sounds appalling and it is far from the full picture,” Ambassador Ma Jianchun told journalists at his office on Monday.
According to him, Wuhan is the most affected city by the outbreak, but even in Wuhan, the infection rate is just at 0.4% which means out of 1,000 people, only 4 caught the disease.
“What we must also note is that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is at 2.1% and that is much lower than other major epidemics in the past two decades,” he added
He stated that about 11,062 patients in China have resumed health and have been discharged from the hospital, which the number outside the epicenter Hubei province has seen a significant decrease in the past two weeks.
“In this war with covid-19, we are already on the winning side, as positive developments have been taking place and I believe we are not far from the end of the struggle,” he said.
The Chinese government has implemented medical assistance policies, to ensure that all patients can receive proper medical treatment even when they cannot afford it, as they tried to prevent the outbreak from spreading to other countries, he said.
He recalled In December 2019, a few people were diagnosed of pneumonia caused by unknown factors in Wuhan, capital city of central China’s Hubei Province, and the disease was later proven to be fairly infectious and drew people’s attention.
“According to statistics, up till now, more than 80% of all infected people are within Hubei province, and among them over 2/3 are in Wuhan city over 10 million residents,” he said.
“We have also been working closely with the Gambian government and its development partners to prevent the outbreak here, and to ensure the health of the Gambian people at home,” he stated.