Autopsy of a pandemic: Hold China, WHO accountable

The findings of a new report are an affirmation of what has long been regarded — but not acknowledged — as damaging negligence by Beijing and WHO

An independent panel reviewing the global handling of the pandemic has criticised the responses by China and the World Health Organization, blaming them for not doing enough and ignoring crucial signs in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. Headed by New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Helen Clark and Liberia’s former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the committee released an interim report on Monday, detailing several points of failure. China did not make adequate efforts to contain the outbreak, WHO dragged its feet till the end of January (and did not declare a pandemic until mid-March), and many countries ignored evidence that the virus spread between humans.

A medical worker inoculates a nurse with a Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine, Osmania General Hospital, Hyderabad, January 18, 2021. (AFP)

The findings are an affirmation of what has long been regarded — but not acknowledged — as damaging negligence by Beijing and WHO. It was most starkly captured in China being reluctant to declare human-to-human transmission. Even as its scientists released the genetic code of the coronavirus on January 10, 2020, China withheld almost irrefutable information that the virus spread between humans. WHO virtually memorialised this transgression in a tweet sent out on January 14, when the UN agency deferred to China’s assessments that the virus did not transmit between humans. Thus began an ostrich-like reaction that the world would eventually be jolted out of only when it was too late and the virus began to rip through multiple countries.