World Health Organization finally admits China didn't report about coronavirus outbreak
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Jul 7, 2020
The global health body said its own regional office had picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of "viral pneumonia".
However the new chronology published this week indicates that it was the World Health Organization office in China which had on December 31 notified its regional point of contact of a case of viral pneumonia. The next day World Health Organization tweeted that there was a cluster of pneumonia cases - with no deaths - in Wuhan, Hubei province, People's Republic of China, and that investigation to identify the cause was underway.
This timeline supersedes the timeline statement published in April 2020.
The updated timeline of WHO's response to Covid-19 posted this week covers events up to June 26.
Days later, on April 20, WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told media that the first report on coronavirus had indeed come from China, but fell short of revealing the source.
McCaul, along with China Task Force member Jim Banks (R., Ind.), have argued that China violated the WHO's International Health Regulations by failing to be transparent about the origins of the pandemic.
The same day, WHO's epidemic information service picked up another news report transmitted by the global epidemiological surveillance network ProMed - based in the United States - about the same group of cases of "pneumonia of unknown causes" in Wuhan.
December 31, 2019: Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. On Friday, Michael Ryan, WHO emergencies director told a press conference that countries have 24-48 hours to officially verify an event and provide the agency with additional information about the nature or cause of an event.
The COVID-19 pandemic will not disappear suddenly, and the risks are still mounting, said Wang Chen, one of China's top respiratory experts.
The Chinese agencies immediately contacted World Health Organization as soon as the agency asked to verify the report, Ryan also said. US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also earlier said that the virus might have originated in a laboratory in China.
