GENEVA (AP) – A panel of experts commissioned by the World Health Organization criticized China and other countries for not taking action to contain the initial coronavirus outbreak before and questioned whether the UN health agency should have labeled it a pandemic before. .
In a report released to the media on Monday, the panel led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said there were “missed opportunities” to establish basic health measures public as soon as possible.
“What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more vigorously by local and national health authorities in China in January,” the document said.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying questioned whether China reacted too slowly.
“As the first country to sound the global alarm against the epidemic, China made immediate and decisive decisions,” she said, noting that Wuhan – where the first human cases were identified – ended three weeks after the outbreak began.
“All countries, not just China, but also the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan or any other country, should try to do better,” said Hua.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson Sirleaf said it was up to countries if they wanted to revise WHO to give it more authority to stop outbreaks, saying the organization was also limited by its lack of funding.
“The end result is that WHO has no power to enforce anything,” she said. “All he can do is ask to be invited.”
Last week, an international team of WHO-led scientists arrived in Wuhan to research the animal origins of the pandemic, after months of political strife to secure China’s approval for the investigation.
The panel also cited evidence from cases in other countries in late January, saying that public health containment measures should have been implemented immediately in any country with a probable case, adding, “They were not.”
Experts also wondered why WHO did not declare a global public health emergency – its biggest outbreak alert – earlier. The UN health agency convened its emergency committee on 22 January, 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 WHO had used the word pandemic earlier than it did,” said the panel.
WHO did not describe the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic until March 11, weeks after the virus started causing explosive outbreaks on several continents, meeting the WHO’s own definition of a flu pandemic.
As the coronavirus began to spread worldwide, leading WHO experts contested how infectious the virus was, saying it was not as contagious as the flu and that people without symptoms rarely spread the virus. Scientists have since concluded that COVID-19 transmits even faster than flu and that a significant proportion of the spread is from people who do not appear to be sick.
Last year, WHO was severely criticized for handling the response to COVID-19. US President Donald Trump criticized the UN health agency for “colluding” with China to cover up the extent of the initial outbreak before suspending US funding for WHO and withdrawing the country from the organization.
The UN health agency gave in to international pressure at its member states’ annual assembly last spring, creating the Independent Pandemic Preparedness and Response Panel. The WHO chief appointed Johnson Sirleaf and Clark – both with previous ties to the UN agency – to lead the team.
An Associated Press investigation in June, it was discovered that the WHO repeatedly praised China in public, while the authorities complained in particular that the Chinese authorities delayed sharing critical epidemic information with them.
Although the panel concluded that “many countries have taken minimal measures to prevent the (COVID-19) spread domestically and internationally”, it did not name specific countries. He also refused to call WHO because he did not criticize countries more strongly for their mistakes instead of praising countries for their response efforts.
Last month, the author of a report taken from the WHO on Italy’s pandemic response said he warned his bosses in May that people could die and that the agency could suffer “catastrophic” reputation damage if it allowed political concerns to suppress the document, according to emails obtained by the AP.
To date, the pandemic has killed more than 2 million people worldwide.
___
AP medical writer Maria Cheng reported from Toronto. Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
___
Follow all AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak