Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for its speedy response to the new coronavirus. They repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately.” They also said their work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”
The AP has found that behind the scenes, the opposite was true. The significant delays by China over not getting the information they needed to fight the spread of the virus frustrated WHO officials.
The AP said they kept the documents needed from WHO for at least a week. [But we all know it was longer than that]
“Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on providing WHO with detailed data on patients and cases, according to recordings of internal meetings held by the U.N. health agency through January — all at a time when the outbreak arguably might have been dramatically slowed,” the AP writes.
“We’re going on very minimal information,” said American epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, now WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, in one internal meeting. “It’s clearly not enough for you to do proper planning.”
“We’re currently at the stage where yes, they’re giving it to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV,” said WHO’s top official in China, Dr. Gauden Galea, referring to the state-owned China Central Television, in another meeting.
Why is this coming out now? We just defunded them. We gave this organization $450 million each year while China gave them $30 million.
The reason this is coming out now is that they want their funding back.
The recordings suggest that rather than colluding with China, as Trump declared, WHO was kept in the dark as China gave it the minimal information required by law, the AP claims.
They weren’t colluding, just lying in public. Poor little victims.
Subscribe to the Daily Newsletter
