WHO learnt about COVID-19 outbreak from media reports, not China, says revised timeline
New York: In a move that won't auger well for Beijing facing the heat of global community for a probe into the spread of Covid-19 from China, the World Health Organization (WHO) backtracked its claim and revised its COVID-19 timeline, stating it had picked up news about the disease from 'media reports' as opposed to its earlier version where it had maintained being briefed by Chinese officials.
While the initial WHO COVID-19 timeline states: "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified", the updated version reads, "WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China."
It further says, "The Country Office notified the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point in the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office about the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission media statement of the cases and provided a translation of it.
WHO’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) platform also picked up a media report on ProMED (a programme of the International Society for Infectious Diseases) about the same cluster of cases of “pneumonia of unknown cause”, in Wuhan.
"Several health authorities from around the world contacted WHO seeking additional information," it says about the development on December 31, 2019.
The update was made earlier this week and contradicts top WHO officials, including director general Tedros Adhanom, who said for months that Chinese authorities had informed the apex health body about the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, with the WHO silently modifying its timeline, the updated version lends credibility to a congressional investigation carried out in the United States of America.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and a member of Congress’s China Task Force told the Washington Free Beacon, "I’m glad to see the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party have both read my interim report on the origins of the pandemic and are finally admitting to the world the truth—the CCP never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO regulation."
"The question now is whether the CCP will continue their false propaganda campaign that continues to claim they warned the world, or whether they will come clean and begin to work with the world health community to get to the bottom of this deadly pandemic," he said.
In his report, the lawmaker minced no words and accused the WHO director general of shielding China.
"Director General Tedros actively engaged in an effort to defend the CCP’s leadership from criticism, negatively impacting the world’s understanding of the virus and hampering the global response effort," his report said as quoted in the media.
The new revelation is expected to develop cracks within the WHO-China bond as the world still awaits to find out about the origin of the virus that has affected 11,032,173 people and killed 525,120, so far.
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