GENEVA (Reuters) – An independent panel said on Monday that Chinese officials could have applied more vigorous public health measures in January to curb the first COVID-19 outbreak, and criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) for declaring an international emergency only in January. 30.
The experts who assessed the global approach to the pandemic, led by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, called for reforms at the Geneva-based UN agency. Their interim report was published just hours after the WHO’s main emergency. expert, Mike Ryan, said global deaths from COVID-19 will be “very soon” in excess of 100,000 per week.
“What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been more vigorously enforced by local and national health authorities in China in January,” the report said, referring to the first outbreak of the new disease in central Wuhan city. in Hubei province.
When evidence of human-to-human transmission emerged, “this signal was being ignored in far too many countries,” it added.
In particular, it wondered why the WHO emergency committee did not meet until the third week of January and did not declare an international emergency until its second meeting on January 30.
Although the term pandemic is not used or defined in the International Health Regulations (2005), its use is to draw attention to the severity of a health event. It wasn’t until March 11 that the WHO used the term, ”the report said.
“The global pandemic alert system is not fit for purpose,” he said. “The World Health Organization has too little power to do the job.”
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has accused the WHO of being “China-centric,” which the agency denies. European countries led by France and Germany have pushed to address the WHO’s shortcomings in funding, governance and legal powers.
The panel called for a “global reset” and said it would make recommendations in a final report to health ministers of WHO’s 194 member states in May.
Reporting by Stephanie Nerving; Edited by Josephine Mason and Alex Richardson