Australian think tank announces global epidemic prevention performance China falls short but blows itself out of the water

The Lowy Institute for International Policy, an Australian think tank, recently ranked Taiwan No. 3 and China was not included in the ranking for the global Wuhan pneumonia (novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19) outbreak. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin bragged about China’s “Epidemic prevention effectiveness”.

On January 28, the Lloyd’s International Policy Institute released data on the epidemic prevention performance of countries around the world, based on the cumulative number of confirmed cases, the number of confirmed cases per million people, the number of confirmed deaths, the number of confirmed deaths per million people, the ratio of confirmed cases to the number of people tested, and the number of people tested per 1,000 people, the top 10 epidemic prevention performers were New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Cyprus, Rwanda, Iceland, Australia, Latvia, and Sri Lanka. Among the 98 rankings, China, the “model student of epidemic prevention” according to WHO, is not found, because the Chinese data is not transparent and there is little public information.

According to a report in China’s Global Times, Wang Wenbin, at a regular press conference, repeated the same old story about China’s “epidemic prevention effectiveness” in response to the rankings, counting from the early days of the Wuhan outbreak to June last year, when China released its official version of the timeline for dealing with the epidemic, and citing a report in the prestigious journal Science that said China’s epidemic prevention measures had reduced the number of infections in China by He also cited a report by the prestigious journal Science that Chinese measures to prevent the epidemic have reduced the number of infected people in China by 700,000, as well as a Singaporean poll that said Chinese people were satisfied with the official handling of the epidemic.

Wang boasted that “China has also actively participated and promoted international cooperation in the fight against the epidemic in a transparent and responsible manner,” even claiming that China was “the first country to report the epidemic to the World health Organization,” stressing that “we will continue to work with the international community to promote cooperation in the fight against the epidemic and work together to overcome the epidemic completely and early.”