I'm not sure what the World Health Organization is hoping to get out of China at this point but five years on they have once again to release data about the origins of COVID-19. The WHO published a letter on its website yesterday.
Five years ago on 31 December 2019, WHO’s Country Office in China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, China. In the weeks, months and years that unfolded after that, COVID-19 came to shape our lives and our world.
At WHO, we went to work immediately as the new year dawned. WHO employees activated emergency systems on 1 January 2020, and informed the world on 4 January. By 9-12 January, WHO had published its first set of comprehensive guidance for countries, and on 13 January, we brought together partners to publish the blueprint of the first SARS-CoV-2 laboratory test.
Here's what this summary leaves out. The WHO initially went along with China's denials that the virus was spreading from human to human.
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020
This was an outright lie on China's part as they had know the truth for weeks by that point. And the WHO became complicit in those lies when, in January, Dr. Tedros decided not to declare an international emergency after heavy lobbying from China.
In late January, Dr. Tedros met with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing. The outbreak was gathering speed, if still largely confined to China, as the two men sat in front of a bucolic mural in the Great Hall of the People and carved out an agreement...
The agreement was critical for Dr. Tedros, who the previous week had decided against declaring an international emergency after convening a committee to advise him.
What was not publicly known, though, was that the committee’s Jan. 23 decision followed intense lobbying, notably by China, according to diplomats and health officials. Committee members are international experts largely insulated from influence. But in Geneva, China’s ambassador made it clear that his country would view an emergency declaration as a vote of no confidence.
China also presented data to the committee, portraying a situation under relative control.
Half the committee said it was too early to declare an emergency. The outcome surprised many countries, as did Dr. Tedros when he publicly praised both Mr. Xi and China’s pneumonia surveillance system.
“It was that system that caught this event,” he said during a news conference.
That was wrong. China’s surveillance system had failed to spot the outbreak, a failure that experts now say allowed its spread to accelerate. Asked to explain the discrepancy, the W.H.O. referred questions to China...
In the end, Dr. Tedros declared an emergency on Jan. 30, on the advice of nearly every member of the committee, save for the Chinese delegate.
Instead of sounding the alarm, the WHO and Dr. Tedros went along with China's lies in January when the truth still might have mattered. As for praising China's system, we know that China did its best to silence word of the spread by having police threaten the doctors who dared to speak up.
As for the agreement Dr. Tedros made with Xi Jinping to allow WHO scientists into China, that was also a bust. The delegation that arrived in China in February was not allowed to look at China's early response to the virus and was not allowed to investigate the animal source of the virus. Initially, they were not going to be allowed to visit Wuhan either but after complaints they allowed three people, escorted by three Chinese scientists, to visit the city but not the market.
In short, all of the questions that needed to be addressed were off limits. This is what the WHO got in exchange for allowing China to manipulate it for a few critical weeks in January.
The WHO letter went on to urge China to turn over more data.
We continue to call on China to share data and access so we can understand the origins of COVID-19. This is a moral and scientific imperative. Without transparency, sharing, and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.
They've been lying and hiding for five years. Why would they come forward now? Here's China's response.
Beijing hit back Tuesday at the WHO’s comments, saying it has shared information on Covid “without holding back.”
“On the issue of Covid-19 traceability, China has shared the most data and research results and made the greatest contribution to global traceability research,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry.
“WHO’s international experts have repeatedly said that during their visit to China, they went to all the places they wanted to go and met all the people they wanted to see,” Mao added.
China has not been forthcoming and there's really no reason to think that is likely to change.
