As China recorded its first case of Monkeypox, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wu Zunyou advised against "skin-to-skin contact with foreigners."
Although it was fairly sound advice, the statement has received criticism from some, who labelled it "racist."
In a post on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform, Wu wrote that the country's tight restrictions -- adopted as a response to COVID-19 and referred to as the "Zero-Covid" policy -- had thus far prevented the spread of Monkeypox in the country, until a single confirmed case, which "slipped through the net."
"It is necessary and important to strengthen the monitoring and prevention of monkeypox," Wu wrote in his post, taking care to put emphasis on the risk of disease spreading through international travel and close contact.
He issued a list of five recommendations for the public -- the first being, "Do not have skin-to-skin contact with foreigners."
While this is indeed medically sound advice, his post stirred a bit of controversy on Weibo.
"This is very inappropriate [to say]. At the start of the pandemic, some foreigners stood up and [defended us] by saying that Chinese people are not viruses," wrote one commenter.
"How racist is this? What about the ones like me who have been living in China for almost ten years? We haven't seen our families in like 3-4 years due to borders being closed," wrote another user.
However, some users did appear to grasp the fact it was good advice: "It's good to open the country's door, but we can't just let everything in," one user wrote.
The debate on Weibo underlines the growing "pandemic fatigue" in China -- the country has been under a "Zero-Covid" policy that sees total lockdowns imposed merely after the detection of a handful of cases in major cities, unlike the rest of the world, which has largely moved on to a "post-Covid" phase of learning to live with the virus.
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