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Li Bin, Deputy Director of the National Health Commission, together with over 100 experts and officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other countries stressed the importance of building a mechanism to prevent and control the dual challenges caused by the flu and COVID-19 in the winter season, on a video conference held by China on Thursday.

In his keynote speech, Li said that people can be easily infected by viruses in the winter season, so it's important for all countries to strengthen the mechanism for virus monitoring and early warning and emergency response to prevent COVID-19 cluster infections.

He also highlighted that China will continue to share its experience of COVID-19 prevention and treatment with other communities and further deepen international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control, building a healthy community for humankind.

Delegates from Germany, South Korea, Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, and other countries stressed the importance of strengthening surveillance of influenza-like cases and influenza vaccination to high-risk groups, saying global cooperation is vital to address the dual challenges posed by COVID-19 and influenza.

So far, there are over 44.7 million COVID-19 cases and about 1.17 million deaths globally, among which Europe, North America and Latin America account for over 66 percent of global cases and over 76 percent of global deaths.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has announced a second national lockdown until at least the end of November. Under the new restrictions, people would only be allowed to leave home for essential work or medical reasons.

On the same day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also announced a four-week nationwide shutdown of restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters and other leisure facilities in a bid to curb a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.

Until now, universal COVID-19 vaccination has not been conducted in any country though scientists across the world are racing for an effective coronavirus vaccine, hoping it would be available by the end of this year.