March 11, 2020. Fabrice Coffrini
·
The World Health Organization
changed its coronavirus timeline to say that its China office first found out
about the novel coronavirus from local reports on the "viral
pneumonia," rather than from Chinese officials.
·
The revision, published June 29,
comes as multiple reports found that China withheld key information about the
coronavirus outbreak from the public and the WHO for several days.
·
For months, China has been accused
of covering up its knowledge of the coronavirus in its early days, and the WHO
of helping it do so. Both sides have repeatedly refuted these accusations.
The World Health
Organization changed its coronavirus timeline to say it first heard about the
coronavirus from a press release online, rather than a report from Chinese
authorities.
In the revision,
published June 29, the WHO said that on December 31, 2019, "WHO's Country
Office in the People's Republic of China picked up a media statement by the
Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of 'viral
pneumonia' in Wuhan, People's Republic of China."
That same day, the
WHO's open-source intelligence platform also picked up a Chinese-language news report from Finance Sina, a Chinese
outlet, about the same cluster of cases in Wuhan, attributed to a
"pneumonia of unknown cause," the agency said.
The WHO requested
further information about the reports from China over the next two days — on
January 1 and January 2, 2020 — but only got a response on January 3.
In a previous
chronology, published in April, the WHO had said that it found out about the
cases from the Wuhan municipal health commission, without specifying where or
how it was notified, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The revised
chronology now shows that the WHO's China office, not Chinese authorities, had
raised the first alert.
WHO emergencies
director Michael Ryan told reporters on Friday that countries have 24 to 48
hours to verify an event and tell the WHO about it, and that Chinese
authorities had immediately contacted the WHO as soon as the agency asked about
the reports.
In a Sunday statement
to Business Insider, a WHO spokesperson said the new timeline "gives more
details" on the WHO's initial contact with China, and "illustrates
the range of WHO's work to stop transmission and save lives."
The spokeperson did
not explain why the WHO took months to clarify how it found out about the
outbreak.
China has been
accused of covering up the coronavirus in its early days, suppressing key
information to its citizens and the WHO.
The Associated Press
(AP) reported last month that China delayed the release of critical information about
the outbreak to the public and the WHO for several days, and
waited more than a week to release the virus' genome — actions that likely
delayed the development of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tests.
The AP also reported in April that top Chinese
leaders had known for six days in January that
the coronavirus could become a deadly pandemic, but told the world the virus
posed a low risk to people and could not be transmitted between humans.
At the same time, the
WHO, which relies on countries to provide their own data, took China at its
word and offered the same advice — which has since
proven to be wrong.
China has long denied
accusations of a coverup, saying it released information and genome sequences
as early as possible.
The WHO has also been
accused of helping China cover up the outbreak in its early days.
President Donald
Trump, who repeatedly highlighted the allegations, has since withdrawn $400
million of US funding into the WHO and threatened to sever ties to the agency.
China, meanwhile, has
pledged billions of dollars in additional funds into
the agency. Experts previously told Business Insider that
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, the WHO's director-general, was "deeply
compromised."
The health agency has
repeatedly denied the accusations.
The WHO announced
last week that it would send a team to China to investigate how
the coronavirus started, but did not give specific details on the makeup of the
team.
Conducting
independent research in China is notoriously difficult, especially if it could
embarrass the ruling Communist Party. Teams probing Chinese human-rights
accusations have previously found themselves on heavily choreographed and
chaperoned tours, and forbidden to carry out investigations.
In response to a
request for further information, the WHO spokesperson cited a July 1 statement
from Ryan, the emergencies director, saying that the team will "consist of
two experts from WHO headquarters: one an expert on animal health, and an
epidemiologist with experience in epidemiological investigations."
They will "set
up the scope of the study, the terms of reference, and the program of
work," the spokesperson added.
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