China on Wednesday expressed high satisfaction with the gesture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send medical materials to Wuhan to deal with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, though Beijing had earlier said it did not expect much from India.
The Indian Air Force will send a C-17 transport jet to Wuhan on Thursday to carry medical supplies and evacuate remaining Indians from there.
Li Xiaojun, director of information of the State Council (China's highest executive body), had told THE WEEK last week, "We did not get any help from India and we did not expect that as well as India is too large a country with huge population."
Referring to the planned Indian Air Force C-17 deployment, China's State Council told THE WEEK in a statement, "Prime Minister Modi and India showed the foremost will to help us. That is great from him."
"India has sent us some needy protection suits for single use, medical masks and surgical masks etc. There is no medicine," the statement further said.
However, Modi's gesture is a drop in the ocean. The Chinese government has said that it needs more supplies and Beijing is reaching out to the global community.
The State Council statement said, "The protection suits cannot meet demands. Wuhan hospitals need about 80,000 protection suits daily but it has only one day extra stock! We need to buy such suits worldwide. Donations of such suits from all corners are far from enough.”
The government said because of scarcity of such stocks of protection suits, a large number of doctors and nurses have been infected with coronavirus.
"And nine of them died largely due to lack of protection suits, masks, shields and goggles," said a senior officer of the State Council.
The coronavirus outbreak has continued unabated in Wuhan, affecting almost all parts of Hubei province under which Wuhan falls.
The Chinese government has used advanced information technology to count the number of the people infected with the coronavirus and the lives lost.
According to the National Health Commission of China in Beijing, the Chinese government has decided to categorise the coronavirus statistics into six categories—accumulated confirmed cases, accumulated suspected cases, accumulated deaths, present confirmed cases, present suspected cases and present serious cases.
According to the State Council, the total number of accumulated confirmed cases has reached almost 75,000, and accumulated suspected cases have reached around 14,500. Accumulated death toll has reached 2,009 till Wednesday morning, a rise of 139 from Tuesday.
The present confirmed cases are around 58,000 (which are new cases) while present suspected cases are around 5,250. These two categories are being treated in different hospitals in China while rest are being treated at isolated care units or are being quarantined at home.
Out all of them, 11,977 patients are in extremely serious condition, which gives the notion that there is no chance that the rate of fatalities would go down very soon.
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A statewide health emergency was declared by Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has called for massive support of virus-management gear and masks from the world, which is running heavily short of supply.
The Chinese State Council today told THE WEEK, "No miracle medicines work. We are depending on Chinese traditional medicines at this hour of crisis."
When asked whether the Western medicines have been stopped from being used, the senior officer of the State Council said, "Traditional medicines are more available than Western medicine. In many cases we are mixing both—Chinese traditional medicines and Western medicines."
