BEIJING - China will continue to support the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) in uniting and rallying the international community to fight the pandemic, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Monday at a regular news briefing.

On Jan 14, Ma Xiaowei, head of China's National Health Commission (NHC) spoke to WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the phone to exchange views mainly on the COVID-19 situation in China, Wang said.

Tedros spoke highly of the Chinese government's efforts to cope with the COVID-19 epidemic and thanked China for maintaining long-term technical exchanges and sharing epidemiological information and data with WHO, Wang said.

The two sides agreed to continue to strengthen technical exchanges and cooperation on epidemiological response and work together to protect global health security, Wang added.

Noting that China attaches great importance to its cooperation and ties with WHO, Wang said China actively supports the organization's leading coordinating role in the global fight against the pandemic, and maintains close exchange with the WHO Secretariat and Director-General Tedros.

China has been sharing information with WHO and other countries since COVID-19 began and reported the infections to WHO at the earliest opportunity. China is the first country to identify the pathogen and share the genome sequence, and established a technical exchange mechanism with WHO. Over the past month or so alone, the Chinese side has had technical exchanges five times and one phone conversation with WHO, according to Wang.

China's contribution to the global fight against COVID has been recognized by WHO and widely among the members of the international community, the spokesman said.

Wang said China will continue to support WHO's role in uniting and rallying the international community to fight the pandemic and share information with WHO and the rest of the international community in a timely, open and transparent manner in accordance with the law to jointly tackle the COVID challenge.

"We hope all sides will view these issues with a science-based and objective attitude and respect and support China's COVID response so that we can together make our due contribution to global solidarity against the pandemic," said Wang.