WHO panel slams China, says it ought to have acted faster to comprise pandemic

Image Source : AP FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020 file picture, Health Officials in hazmat fits wait on the gate to test physique temperatures of passengers arriving from town of Wuhan, on the airport in Beijing, China. A panel of specialists commissioned by the World Health Organization has criticized China and different nations for not shifting to stem the preliminary outbreak of the coronavirus earlier and questioned whether or not the U.N. well being company ought to have labeled it a pandemic sooner. 
A panel of specialists commissioned by the World Health Organization has criticized China and different nations for not shifting to stem the preliminary outbreak of the coronavirus earlier and questioned whether or not the U.N. well being company ought to have labeled it a pandemic sooner.
In a report issued to the media Monday, the panel led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark mentioned there have been “lost opportunities” to arrange primary public well being measures as early as potential.
“What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January,” shortly after the coronavirus started sickening clusters of individuals, it mentioned.
The panel additionally cited proof of circumstances in different nations in late January, saying public well being containment measures ought to have been put in place instantly in any nation with a probable case, including: “They were not.”
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“The reality is that only a minority of countries took full advantage of the information available to them to respond to the evidence of an emerging pandemic,” the panel mentioned.
The specialists additionally puzzled why WHO didn’t declare a world public well being emergency — its highest warning for outbreaks — sooner. The U.N. well being company convened its emergency committee on Jan. 22, however didn’t characterize the rising pandemic as a global emergency till per week later. At the time, WHO mentioned its skilled committee was divided on whether or not a world emergency needs to be declared.

“One more question is whether it would have helped if WHO used the word pandemic earlier than it did,” the panel mentioned.
WHO didn’t describe the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic till March 11, weeks after the virus had begun inflicting explosive outbreaks in quite a few continents, assembly WHO’s personal definition for a flu pandemic.
As the coronavirus started spreading throughout the globe, WHO’s prime specialists disputed how infectious the virus was, saying it was not as contagious as flu and that individuals with out signs solely hardly ever unfold the virus. Scientists have since concluded that COVID-19 transmits even faster than the flu and {that a} vital proportion of unfold is from individuals who don’t seem like sick.
Over the previous 12 months, WHO has come below heavy criticism for its dealing with of the response to COVID-19. U.S. President Donald Trump slammed the U.N. well being company for “colluding” with China to cowl up the extent of the preliminary outbreak earlier than halting U.S. funding for WHO and pulling the nation out of the group.
The U.N. well being company bowed to the worldwide strain on the annual meeting of its member states final spring by creating the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which produced its first report in November. The WHO chief requested Johnson Sirleaf and Clark — who each have earlier ties to the U.N. company — to guide the group.
An Associated Press investigation in June discovered WHO repeatedly lauded China in public whereas officers privately complained that Chinese officers stalled on sharing important epidemic data with them.
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