People walk through an alley decorated with red lanterns, or hong denglong, during the Chinese New Year holiday, also known as the Spring Festival, inaugurating the Year of the Ox, in a shopping and tourist area on February 16, 2021 in Beijing , China.
Kevin Frayer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
LONDON – A global “pandemic treaty” has been proposed in an attempt to ensure more transparency about future pandemics amid concerns about China’s reluctance to share information about the coronavirus outbreak.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among those calling for an international pandemic treaty that would lead countries to agree to share data on virus outbreaks and infectious diseases.
Johnson supported the proposal on Monday after the United Kingdom and the United States expressed concern about the level of access offered to a World Health Organization mission in China, with the aim of discovering the origins of the coronavirus that first appeared in Wuhan in late 2019.
“I think what the world needs to see is a general agreement on how we track data around zoonotic pandemics, we want zoonotic research centers around the world and we want a general agreement on transparency,” Johnson told a news conference.
“I think one of the attractive ideas that we saw in the last few months was a proposal for a global pandemic treaty, so that the signatory countries ensure that they have contributed with all the data at their disposal and that we can get to the bottom of what happened and prevent it from happening again “, he said. It is “the sensible thing to do”.
Johnson is not the first to call for more transparency around disease outbreaks. In December, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, called for “an international treaty on pandemics within the framework of the WHO”.
“The number of epidemics has multiplied in recent decades,” said Michel at the time. “We knew that the world was not immune to a major pandemic. Still, we were taken by surprise. This is a form of failure and we will have to learn the lessons and draw conclusions from that.” He tweeted about it last week and thanked Johnson for his comments this week.
‘Deep concerns’
Fears about pandemic transparency arise amid concerns that the WHO investigation mission could not go to China until last month, more than a year after the outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan and only after prolonged negotiations with Beijing to allow your investigation. The researchers did not have full access to the data that could help to better understand the origins of Covid-19.
After four weeks of investigations, the WHO mission said last week that the virus “probably” originated in animals and spread to humans, and rejected a laboratory leak theory. Since then, a member of the WHO delegation has said that China has refused to give them access to all the raw data they had requested. Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious disease specialist and a member of the WHO delegation, told Reuters on Saturday that China had refused access to the requested raw data on initial infections.
China’s refusal was also reported by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The country’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters, but China had already defended its cooperation with WHO.
The United Kingdom and the United States expressed what the White House described as “deep concerns” about how the findings of the WHO Covid-19 report were communicated.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement on Saturday that it is imperative that the WHO report be independent and free from “changes by the Chinese government”.
“To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next, China must make its data available from the first days of the outbreak. From now on, all countries, including China, must participate in a transparent and robust prevention and response process. to health emergencies – so that the world learns as much as possible as quickly as possible, “he said.
A medical worker collects a smear sample from a student to be tested for the Covid-19 coronavirus at Wuhan University on the first day of classes in Wuhan on June 8, 2020.
STR | AFP via Getty Images
UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab echoed those sentiments on Sunday, telling the BBC that Britain shares “concerns that it will get full cooperation and get the answers it needs, and so we will press for it get full access “.
China reaction
Peter Ben Embarek speaks at a news conference to end the visit by an international team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the city of Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei, on February 9, 2021.
Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images
The spokesman added that “origin tracking is a complex scientific issue involving many countries and regions, and must be carried out by collaborating global scientists.” He said the Chinese government “has provided strong support and assistance for the WHO mission”.
On Monday, the British Prime Minister said he considered it “quite obvious that most of the evidence seems to point to the origin of the disease in Wuhan”.
“So I think we all need to see as much as we can about how this could have happened, the zoonotic questions that people are asking. I think we need as much data as possible,” said Johnson.
Five-point plan
The UK currently holds the presidency of the Group of Seven, an intergovernmental organization that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, and looks ready to use a meeting on Friday to push for a treaty.
The UK government said in a statement on Saturday that Johnson “will ask for a new global approach to pandemics that learns from the division that characterized the initial international response to the coronavirus pandemic”.
“International preparedness for a pandemic will be a high priority for the UK’s G7 Presidency,” he said, and Johnson will try to work with other G-7 leaders to implement a five-point plan that was announced at the UN General Assembly on last year.
“The five-point plan includes a worldwide network of zoonotic research centers, developing global manufacturing capacity for treatments and vaccines, the design of a global pandemic early warning system, the agreement on global protocols for a future health emergency and the reduction of trade barriers. “