Foreign criticism of China's current COVID response unreasonable

The criticism and speculation from certain countries on the handling of China's current outbreak is unreasonable, unscientific and unfounded, a senior official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.

Wu Xi, director of the ministry's department of consular affairs made the remarks while responding to criticism of the lack of transparency from China and possible emergence of new COVID-19 variants from the current outbreak in the country.

She said the country has always shared relevant information and data with the international community in an open, transparent and responsible way, including the genome sequencing results of the novel coronavirus of China's current outbreak.

The country has also cooperated with the WHO closely, she said. It has held more than 60 technical communications with the WHO in total, including five such communications in the past month, she said at a news conference.

The WHO said on Jan 4 that the virus genome sequencing data provided by China's National Health Commission showed that the dominant variant in China is similar to those detected in Chinese travelers to other countries and regions and there is no new variant found in them, she said.

The health minister of Singapore also said on Jan 9 that there is no new variant detected from Chinese travelers and the number of Chinese positive cases only account for 5 percent of the total imported cases in Singapore, Wu added.