The World Health Organization has bowed to calls Monday from most of its member states to conduct a “comprehensive evaluation” probe into how it managed the international response to the coronavirus.
The “comprehensive evaluation,” sought by a coalition of African, European, and other countries, is intended to review “lessons learned” from WHO’s coordination of the global response to COVID-19 but would stop short of looking into contentious issues such as the origins of the new coronavirus.
Recall that there has been finger-pointing between the U.S. and China over a pandemic that has killed over 300,000 people and leveled the global economy.
President Donald Trump has claimed he has proof suggesting the coronavirus originated in a lab in China while repeatedly attacking WHO, claiming that it helped China conceal the extent of the coronavirus pandemic in its early stages. Several Republican lawmakers have also called on WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to resign.
Trump ordered a temporary suspension of funding for WHO from the United States — the health agency’s biggest single donor — pending a review of its early response. The advisory body, echoing comments from many countries, said such a review during the “heat of the response” could hurt WHO’s ability to respond to it.
Tedros has now said he would launch an independent evaluation of WHO’s response “at the earliest appropriate moment” — alluding to findings published Monday in the first report by an oversight advisory body commissioned to look into WHO’s response.
The 11-page report raised questions such as whether WHO’s warning system for alerting the world to outbreaks is adequate, and suggested member states might need to “reassess” WHO’s role in providing travel advice to countries.
In his opening remarks at the WHO meeting, Tedros held firm and sought to focus on the bigger troubles posed by the outbreak, saying “we have been humbled by this very small microbe.”
“The pandemic has brought out the best and worst of humanity. This contagion exposes the fault lines, inequalities, injustices, and contradictions of our modern world. It has highlighted our strengths and our vulnerabilities. Science has been hailed and scorned. Nations have come together as never before. And geopolitical divisions have been thrown into sharp relief” he added.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said it was time to be frank about why COVID-19 has “spun out of control.”
“There was a failure by this organization to obtain the information that the world needed and that failure cost many lives,” Azar said.
Speaking hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China would provide $2 billion to help respond to the outbreak and its economic fallout, Azar said the U.S. had allocated $9 billion to coronavirus containment efforts around the world.
China, meanwhile, sought to divert attention to its renewed efforts to slow the coronavirus pandemic, with Xi announcing the $2 billion outlay over two years to fight it. Last year, China donated about $86 million to WHO.
Xi insisted that China had acted with “openness, transparency and responsibility” when the epidemic was detected in Wuhan. He said China had give all relevant outbreak data to WHO and other countries, including the virus’s genetic sequence, “in a most timely fashion.”
Xi said China had done “everything in our power to support and assist countries in need,” but acknowledged more needed to be done. He said that in recent weeks, China has dispatched medical supplies to more than 50 African countries and that 46 Chinese medical teams were currently on the continent helping local officials.
Other world leaders including the presidents of France, South Korea and South Africa and Germany’s chancellor were also piped in to throw their support to the WHO, which has been put on the defensive from a Trump administration that has blamed it for mishandling the outbreak and showering excessive praise on China’s response. The European Union and others staked out a middle ground.
