By Alistair Smout
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that world powers should close a global pandemic treaty to ensure adequate transparency after the new Chinese coronavirus outbreak.
Johnson said he would like to come to a global pandemic treaty in which countries agree to share data, amid British and American concerns about access granted to a World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China.
Asked by Reuters about any action he wants to improve transparency, Johnson said: “I think what the world needs to see is a general agreement on how we track data around zoonotic pandemics … and we want a joint agreement on transparency . “
“I think one of the attractive ideas that we saw in the last few months was a proposal for a global treaty on pandemics, 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 at a news conference.
“That is the sensible thing to do.”
European Council President Charles Michel wrote on Twitter that he welcomed “@BorisJohnson’s support for working together on a pandemic treaty to improve preparedness, resilience and global recovery.”
As part of the British presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations, Johnson wants to lead efforts in a global approach to pandemics, including an early warning system. But a statement from the weekend before a call from G7 leaders on Friday did not elaborate on any transparency treaty.
The outbreak of COVID-19, first detected in China in late 2019, killed 2.4 million people, put the global economy in its worst peacetime crisis since the Great Depression and damaged the normal lives of billions of people. people.
Britain’s Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday that he shared US concerns about the level of access granted to the World Health Organization’s investigation mission COVID-19 to China, while Johnson said he supported the president. of the USA, Joe Biden, in need of more data. the investigation.
Asked by Reuters about who he held responsible for any lack of transparency about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson said, “I think it’s pretty 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 possible about how this could have happened, the zoonotic questions that people are asking. I think we need as much data as possible,” he said.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout, Guy Faulconbridge and William James; Editing by Hugh Lawson, William Maclean)