President Donald Trump excoriated the WHO and its director-general in a letter about the agency's response to COVID-19 and handling of China. Here, Newsweek adds more context to the letter.
did not publish any report in early December, 2019, about a virus spreading in Wuhan," Horton wrote on Twitter."The first reports we published were from Chinese scientists on Jan 24, 2020."
Had the WHO publicly taken an antagonistic stance towards China, it may have received less cooperation from Beijing over COVID-19 than it did. When the bigger picture is mitigating a potential global pandemic, these utilitarian calculations about the greater good matter. By no later than December 30, 2019, the World Health Organization office in Beijing knew that there was a"major public health" concern in Wuhan. Between December 26 and December 30, China's media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan, based on patient data sent to multiple Chinese genomics companies. Additionally, during this period, Dr.
Others were also sounding the alarm. On December 30, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, warned medical colleagues in a private social media message about the outbreak of a new illness and urged his friends to protect themselves against infection., Li was subsequently detained by the authorities for"spreading rumors." After his release, whistleblower Li continued to speak out as he returned to work, where the 33-year-old contracted COVID-19 from a patient, and later died.
But even if it did not, on December 31 the national authorities in China reported to the local WHO office cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan City with an"unknown cause," and made no reference to the apparent similarity with highly-infectious SARS.
"The Taiwanese caseload is low relative to population. We continue to follow developments closely. WHO is taking lessons learned from all areas, including Taiwanese health authorities, to share best practices globally." Per the WHO's International Health Regulations, member states must notify the WHO"of all events that are assessed as possibly constituting a PHEIC [Public Health Emergency of International Concern]...within 24 hours of assessment by the country" using the agency's guidelines.
The result was"immediately reported to the relevant authorities," he wrote, and also on the same day"an annotated version of the genome sequence was submitted to NCBI/GenBank." On January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization gratuitously reaffirmed China's now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans, stating:"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China." This assertion was in direct conflict with censored reports from Wuhan.
"Looking back, I think we declared [an] emergency at the right time," Ghebreyesus said in April, PBS reported."The rest of the world had enough time to respond." Then on February 7, Trump tweeted:"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days.
Ghebreyesus had agreed at a January 28 meeting with Xi to the WHO sending a team of international experts"as soon as possible" to assess the situation and understand more about the virus. Clifford Lane, the clinical director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and an American who was part of the WHO-China mission,"While I was disappointed about not being able to go we received a very good briefing from the team that went," Lane said.
"Only extensive travel restrictions–i.e. over 90%–had any meaningful effect on reducing the magnitude of epidemics," the review said. As of February 3, 2020, China was strongly pressuring countries to lift or forestall travel restrictions. This pressure campaign was bolstered by your incorrect statements on that day telling the world that the spread of the virus outside of China was"minimal and slow" and that"the chances of getting this going to anywhere outside China [were] very low."
China had been pushing nations and airlines to lift travel restrictions on the country. On February 3, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters there was"no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel." On March 3, Ghebreyesus told a press briefing"COVID-19 does not transmit as effectively as influenza."
"These differences mean we can't treat COVID-19 exactly the same way we treat flu," Ghebreyesus told journalists. At the start of March, Dr. Anne Schuchat—the principal deputy director of the CDC—told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the coronavirus outbreak already met two of the three technical criteria for a pandemic—the fact it was a new virus and capable of human-to-human transmission.
On April 11, 2020, several African Ambassadors wrote to the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the discriminatory treatment of Africans related to the pandemic in Guangzhou and other cities in China. You were aware that Chinese authorities were carrying out a campaign of forced quarantines, evictions, and refusal of services against the nationals of these countries. You have not commented on China's racially discriminatory actions.
Taiwan has successfully suppressed COVID-19 despite its proximity to and close ties with China, but was still blocked from this week's World Health Assembly WHO meeting.
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