The Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) did not act quickly and decisively enough to prevent the coronavirus pandemic. They were accused of this by an independent research council from Switzerland, CNN reports.
“What is clear to us for sure is that public health measures could have been introduced more dramatically at both the local and national levels in China in January 2020,” says the report of the council, chaired by the former prime minister. New Zealand Helen Clark and former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Experts concluded that the WHO was delayed when it was already known about the spread of COVID-19. Although warned about it in December, representatives of the organization did not call what was happening a pandemic until the end of January.
They called for reforming the organization: according to them, it does not have enough powers to carry out the functions that are expected of it. Therefore, the council considered, the world needs a “global reset” of its response mechanisms to epidemiological threats.
On January 18, it was reported that the head of the WHO, Tedros Adan Ghebreyesus, warned humanity that it was on the verge of a moral catastrophe: because of how unevenly vaccines are distributed between countries, many people are at risk of death in the poorest countries.
