After suspending contributions to the World Health Organization, the president of the United States, Donald Trump has in a fresh allegation, accused the WHO of conniving with China to conceal reports on the extent of the deadly coronavirus pandemic
In a May 18 letter sent to Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the Geneva-based health agency, the White House said that after careful investigation, reports have shown that the WHO consistently ignored credible reports of the virus when it first spread in Wuhan in early December 2019.
The agency also failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those it came from sources within Wuhan itself.
The letter which pinned on the official twitter handle of Donald Trump, the White House alleged that by no later than December 30, 2019, the World Health Organization office in Beijing knew that there was a “major public health” concern in Wuhan but decided not to inform the public. It noted further that between December 26 and 30, China’s media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan, based on patient data sent to multiple Chinese genomics companies.
According to the U.S, during that period, Dr Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that a new coronavirus was causing a novel disease that was, at the time, afflicting approximately 180 patients.
The US also alleged that by the next day, Taiwanese authorities had communicated information to the WHO indicating human-to-human transmission of a new virus yet the agency chose not to share any of this critical information with the rest of the world, probably for political reason.
The letter noted that going by the guideline stipulated by the International Health Regulations, countries are to report the risk of a health emergency within 24hours, but China did not inform the WHO of the several cases reported in Wuhan, until December 31 2019, even though it likely had knowledge of these cases days or weeks earlier.
The White House further alleged that, even though Dr Zhang Yongzhen of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, had told the Chinese authorities on January 5, 2020, that he had sequenced the genome of the virus yet there were no publications of the information until six days after, on January 1, 202, when the doctor self-posted it online. “After posting it, the next day, the Chinese authorities closed his lab for “rectification,” the White House alleged.
“Even though the WHO acknowledged, Dr. Zhang’s posting was a great act of “transparency”, the agency has been conspicuously silent both with respect to the closure of the doctor’s lab and his assertion that he had notified Chinese authorities of his breakthrough six days earlier,” the letter reads.
According to the White House, aside from the WHO concealing information regarding the virus, it has also given misleading, and inaccurate claims on the pandemic.
First it said was on January 14, 2020, that the WHO gratuitously reaffirmed China’s now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans.
Second, was President Xi Jinping of China reportedly putting pressure on the DG of the agency not to declare the coronavirus outbreak an emergency, which he told the world the next day that the virus does not pose a public health emergency of concern.
The third being that, after the DG of the agency meet with president Xi in Beijing, he praised the Chinese government for its “transparency” with respect to the virus, making the world believe that China had set a “new standard for outbreak control” that bought the world time.
“The agency never mentioned that China had, by then, silenced or punished several doctors for speaking out about the virus and restricted Chinese institutions from publishing information about it,” the U.S said.
