China says 200 million treated, pandemic ‘decisively’ beaten

BEIJING (AP) — China says more than 200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed and treated for COVID-19 since it lifted strict containment measures beginning in November. With 800,000 of the most critically ill patients having recovered, China has “decisively beaten” the pandemic, according to notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by president and party leader Xi Jinping. China enforced some of the world’s most draconian loackdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions and still faces questions about the origins of the virus that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Xi as saying that policies to control the outbreak had been “entirely correct.”