China’s prevention, control measures highlighted by foreign correspondents

   BEIJING, March 14  -- Correspondents based in China have been busy covering China's prevention and control measures since the COVID-19 outbreak and recording the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people during the epidemic.
   In a New York Times opinion piece named "China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It," Ian Johnson, a Beijing-based writer, starts with comparing the airport health checks in Beijing and London.
   "Officials would have had no easy way to track us if one of us came down with COVID-19" as there was "no temperature check and no health statement" in London airport like mandatory ones in Beijing, Johnson said after he got off the plane in London two weeks ago, and in the essay published on Friday.
   "The attitude toward the coronavirus outbreak in the United States and much of Europe has been bizarrely reactive, if not outright passive -- or that the governments in those regions have let pass their best chance to contain the virus's spread," as if "China's experience hadn't given Western countries a warning of the perils of inaction," Johnson said.
   He pointed out that China's leaders "acted far more decisively" than some of their colleagues in other countries, and "some of its policies were motivated by serious concern for the public good and executed by a highly competent civil service."
   John Sudworth with the BBC has interviewed head of the World Health Organization in China Gauden Galea.
   "We have seen how a dramatic rise, which should have led hundreds of thousands of more cases, through a concerted effort at the top-level of government has flattened that epidemic, has drawn it out in such a way that China's own health system can cope better and gained the time for other countries to learn those lessons and not to have to face that same issue," Galea said.
   Sudworth has also visited classrooms without students, as all schools and colleges in China have been closed in the fight against coronavirus. In one clip, thanks to China's advanced teleschool facilities, a teacher in karate gi was demonstrating, with many others practicing from home at the same time.
   Noting that the epidemic has produced a heavy mental health burden, Nathan VanderKlippe, Asia correspondent for Canada's The Globe and Mail, sheds light on a raft of counselling hotlines and online psychological assistance services amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
   The author said that thousands of people -- from local governments, trade unions, women's federations and provincial psychology groups -- have been appointed to help people in distress with offers of free therapy.
   In an article published Tuesday on the British newspaper's website, Financial Times (FT)'s Yuan Yang in Beijing wrote that Chinese people's comfort with staying in the country is because "many see the government's strong measures as proportionate to the situation."
   Yang also takes a close look at healthcare provision in China, saying that unlike the United States, the Chinese government has pledged to cover coronavirus-related healthcare costs.
   Another FT feature bylined by Ryan McMorrow in Beijing and Qianer Liu in Shenzhen, depicts Chinese companies' beta-testing return to work, saying "coronavirus measures such as anti-crowding restrictions in elevators offer a road map for global peers." Xinhua