New Delhi: WHO remains concerned about the evolving Covid situation in China, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, encouraging the country to track the virus and vaccinate people at high risk.
Tedros’ comments, however, is noticeably different from his response to the Covid situation in China in 2020, when he had praised the country’s leadership for “setting a new standard for outbreak response” and their openness to sharing information with WHO and other countries.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 29, 2022
On 30 December, Tedros tweeted that WHO would continue to offer its support for clinical care and protect the shattering healthcare system of China.
Ghebreyesus said in the absence of “comprehensive information” from China, it was “understandable” that countries around the world were acting in ways that they believed would protect their population from the virus.
WHO’s concern now
On 28 December, 2022, Tedros called on China to share the data requested by the world health body to better understand the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. He further clarified that all hypotheses about the origins of the pandemic “remain on the table”.
“Gaps in our understanding of post-COVID19 condition mean we don’t understand how best to treat people suffering with the long-term consequences of infection. Gaps in our understanding of how this pandemic began compromise our ability to prevent future pandemics,” WHO chief said during a press conference.
China Covid death toll was 5,258 as of 3 January against 5,253 a day earlier, The Economic Times reported. Major cities including Shanghai and Beijing are reeling under rapidly increasing infections.
WHO’s praise then
But in 2020, Tedros was an outspoken advocate of the Chinese government’s COVID-19 response. In January that year, the Director General visited China and praised the country’s leadership for “setting a new standard for outbreak response” and their openness to sharing information with the WHO and other countries. Furthermore, domestic Chinese news coverage featured Tedros’ praise of Xi Jinping and subsequent criticism of foreign governments.
Another month and a half went by before the WHO declared the Covid-19 a pandemic, at which point the virus had killed more than 4,000 people, and had infected 1,18,000 people across the world. The move had received heavy criticism from the White House at the time, especially from Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro.
“Even as the WHO under Tedros refused to brand the outbreak as a pandemic for precious weeks and WHO officials repeatedly praised the (Chinese Communist Party) for what we now know was China’s coordinated effort to hide the dangers of the Wuhan virus from the world, the virus spread like wildfire, in no small part because thousands of Chinese citizens continued to travel around the world,” Navarro wrote to Kathy Gilsinan in April 2020 in her report for The Atlantic.
Tedros responded to the US government’s criticisms and threats to cut funding to the WHO in April 2020. “The United States and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy,” he said, urging politicians not to exploit global political differences. “When
there are cracks at national level and global level that’s when the virus
succeeds. For God’s sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world,” he said.
Criticism also came from Japan, when Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, noted that some people have started referring to the World Health Organisation as the “Chinese Health Organization” because of what he described as its close ties to Beijing.
According to Taiwanese officials, the WHO ignored its early warnings about the virus because China refused to allow Taiwan, a self-governing island it claims as its territory, to become a member, The New York Times, reported.
The WHO-China joint mission of 25 national and international experts was held from 16-24 February 2020 to “rapidly inform” national (China) and international planning on next steps in the response to the outbreak of the
coronavirus disease.
Kathy Gilsinan noted that the resulting report of the joint mission did not mention delays
in information-sharing, but did say that “China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.”
The mission came back telling reporters they were largely satisfied with the information China was giving them.
Also read: Japan to tighten COVID border controls for travellers from China