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The chorus for transparency and research on the outbreak of coronavirus disease is growing stronger in the run-up to the truncated session of the World Health Assembly 10 days later.
The disease, which originated in China late last year, has killed more than a quarter of a million people worldwide in just over four months. Many countries blame China for failing to warn the world about the disease that could have minimized its spread. Questions have also been put to the World Health Organization, accused of being too respectful of China.
The strongest criticism of China and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came from the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and from Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Last month, USA USA He suspended funding to WHO to bring the item home.
But the United States is not the only one upset by the role of China and the WHO.
For the past week and more, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has also supported calls for an investigation into the origin of the Covid outbreak.
Also read: China must be clarified in Covid-19 | Opinion
This week, the European Union declared that it would table a resolution at the World Health Assembly for a timely review of the international response to the coronavirus pandemic, including the performance of the World Health Organization.
Diplomats in Washington and Geneva suggest that the resolution, which was being drafted in consultation with a large number of countries, presented a great test for China in the run-up to the annual meeting of the world health body.
Beijing has come under fire for its early handling of the virus, which has pushed the world economy into recession as it spreads across the globe. Cases have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since they were first identified in China in December 2019.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also questioned China’s role in the Covid-19 outbreak, stating that China needs to be open and transparent about what it has learned, its shortcomings and successes.
Ben Wallace’s comments are seen in the context of the statement by British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in April, which underlined the need to ask “difficult questions” about how the coronavirus arose and how it could have been stopped.
Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren made clear last month that her government wanted the origin of the virus to be investigated in addition to an investigation into WHO’s role in the pandemic.
It is in this context, diplomats in Washington said, that China seemed to have begun reaching out to country governments for support in the face of public criticism. This strategy was discovered in Germany, where Chinese diplomats approached German government officials to ask them to make “positive public statements” about China’s management of the disease. Officials in Berlin had rejected the request.
Beijing has had to fight accusations that it had tried to cover up the disease outbreak and had told the world about the disease too late. For example, questions are asked why Chinese authorities stopped Wuhan flights to the rest of the country after the Covid-19 outbreak, but allowed international flights. Or why it restricted research by Chinese scientists on the origins of the virus.
Authorities had rebuked doctors, including Li Wenliang, who later died, for sharing warnings about the risk of coronavirus infection in WeChat groups in late December.
Criticism of this approach to censoring information was rekindled on Friday after a line referring to the coronavirus disease that was detected in China and spread to the world was removed from an article written for a Chinese newspaper by 27 European ambassadors. to commemorate the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations. between the EU and China.
But there have been several cases of Chinese diplomats published around the world launching attacks on the media for what they describe as efforts to politicize the Covid-19 outbreak.
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