GENEVA (AP) – A group of experts commissioned by the World Health Organization has criticized China and other countries for failing to curb the initial outbreak of the coronavirus and questioned whether the UN health agency should of having labeled it as a pandemic before.
In a report released to the media on Monday, the group led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said there were “missed opportunities” to establish basic public health measures as soon as possible. possible.
“What is clear to the group is that public health measures could have been implemented more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January,” he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying discussed whether China had reacted too slowly.
“As the first country to sound the global alarm against the epidemic, China made immediate and decisive decisions,” he said, noting that Wuhan, where the first human cases were identified, was closed at 3 p.m. weeks following the onset of the outbreak.
“All countries, not just China, but also the US, the UK, Japan or any other country, should try to do better,” Hua said.
At a news conference Tuesday, Johnson Sirleaf said it was up to countries if they wanted to review the WHO to give it more authority to eliminate outbreaks, saying the organization was also constrained by its lack of funding.
“The bottom line is that the WHO has no powers to enforce anything,” he said. “All he can do is ask for the invitation.”
Last week, an international team of WHO-led scientists arrived in Wuhan to investigate the animal origins of the pandemic after months of political fights to get China’s approval for the probe.
The group also cited case evidence in other countries in late January, saying public health containment measures should have been put in place immediately in any country with a probable case, adding: “They were not. “.
Experts also wondered why the WHO had not previously declared a global public health emergency (its highest outbreak warning). The UN health agency convened its emergency committee on January 22, but did not characterize the emerging pandemic as an international emergency until a week later.
“One more question is whether it would have helped if the WHO used the word pandemic sooner rather than later,” the group said.
The WHO did not describe the outbreak of COVID-19 as a pandemic until March 11, weeks after the virus began to cause explosive outbreaks on many continents, and met the WHO’s own definition of a pandemic. of flu.
When the coronavirus began to spread around the world, leading WHO experts discussed the virus infection, saying it was not as contagious as the flu and that asymptomatic people rarely spread the virus. Since then, scientists have concluded that COVID-19 transmits even faster than the flu and that a significant proportion of the spread comes from people who do not appear to be ill.
Over the past year, the WHO has received strong criticism for its treatment of the response to COVID-19. U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized the UN health agency for having “placed” with China to cover up the scope of the initial outbreak before stopping U.S. funding for the WHO and take the country out of the organization.
The UN health agency bowed to international pressure at the annual assembly of its member states last spring by creating the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. The WHO chief appointed Johnson Sirleaf and Clark, both of whom have previous ties to the UN agency, to lead the team.
An investigation by the Associated Press in June it was found that the WHO repeatedly praised China in public, while officials privately complained that Chinese officials stalled in sharing critical information about the epidemic with them.
Although the group concluded that “many countries took minimal measures to prevent the spread (of COVID-19) domestically and internationally,” it did not name specific countries. He also refused to call on the WHO for its failure in the most acute criticism of countries for his wrong steps instead of praising countries for their response efforts.
Last month, the author of a withdrawn WHO report on the response to Italy’s pandemic said he warned his bosses in May that people could die and that the agency could suffer reputational damage. ” catastrophic “if it allowed political concerns to suppress the document, according to emails obtained by the PA.
To date, the pandemic has killed more than 2 million people worldwide.
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AP medical writer Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
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