The independent panel on Covid-19 announced by the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in July, will present its first update to the executive board of the world body at its meeting on October 5-6.
The panel was established at the World Health Assembly in the context of strong criticism leveled at the WHO chief and Beijing for their handling of the contagious virus believed to have originated in China’s Wuhan. Beijing blocked domestic travel in the first weeks of the infection, but allowed flights to leave the country freely, spreading the virus around the world.
According to the latest count, John Hopkins University’s Worldwide Covid-19 Infection Tracker indicates that the virus has infected more than 31 million people worldwide and has nearly killed a million people. China, from where the disease began late last year, has reported only a small proportion of infections, fewer even than Oman’s 95,000 cases. The United States and India are among the worst affected.
The United States had led the demand for an independent review of the WHO response that was seen as allowing Beijing to guide its hand in the early days of the pandemic. At the UN General Assembly this week, Donald Trump, who removed the United States from the world health body for its handling of the disease, lashed out at China again, calling on the UN to hold China accountable for unleashing “this plague” on the world.
Diplomats in New Delhi and Geneva, however, suggest that this is unlikely to happen. One of them said the independent panel, co-chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was unlikely to be critical of the WHO’s handling of the disease in the context of China.
Tedros and the independent panel have already made clear that the exercise was not a fault-finding exercise, but an effort to improve the world’s response to the next pandemic.
“While we are clear that the Independent Panel must shed light on what has happened and why, this exercise is not a blame game,” said Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Co-Chair of the Panel at its first meeting the last week. , according to an official statement.
Panel co-chair Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she hoped her report would lead to “bold, credible, robust and implementable solutions that will ensure our world is better prepared for the next pandemic.”
The panel is expected to present its final report before the next World Health Assembly (WMA) in May next year, but will present regular updates for other meetings. Like when WHO’s main policy-making body, the WMA, resumes its meeting from 9 to 14 November.
The United States is not part of the panel. Preeti Sudan, a retired official who was secretary of health for the Union of India when the coronavirus disease broke out, is a member of the WHO panel.
China sent Zhong Nanshan, the pulmonologist whom the Chinese media credited with leading the country’s fight against the outbreak of a new coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
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