GENEVA: The World Health Organisation yesterday bowed to calls from most of its member states to launch an independent probe into how it managed the international response to the coronavirus, which has been clouded by finger-pointing between the US and China over a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people and levelled the global economy.
The “comprehensive evaluation,” sought by a coalition of African, European and other countries, is intended to review “lessons learned” from WHO’s co-ordination of the global response to Covid-19, but would stop short of looking into contentious issues such as the origins of the new coronavirus.
US President Donald Trump has claimed he has proof suggesting the coronavirus originated in a lab in China while the scientific community has insisted all evidence to date shows the virus likely jumped into humans from animals.
In Washington, Trump faulted WHO for having done “a very sad job” lately and said he was considering whether to cut the annual US funding from $450 million a year to $40m.
“They gave us a lot of bad advice, terrible advice,” he said. “They were wrong so much, always on the side of China.”
“They gave us a lot of bad advice, terrible advice,” he said. “They were wrong so much, always on the side of China.”
WHO’s normally bureaucratic annual assembly this week has been overshadowed by mutual recriminations and political sniping between the US and China.
Trump has repeatedly attacked WHO, claiming that it helped China conceal the extent of the coronavirus pandemic in its early stages. Several Republican legislators have called on WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to resign.
Tedros said he would launch an independent evaluation of WHO’s response “at the earliest appropriate moment” – alluding to findings published yesterday in a first report by an oversight advisory body commissioned to look into WHO’s response.
The report raised questions about the WHO’s system to alert the world.