The WHO Secretariat should clarify how it responded to reports from various nations at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his claim that Taiwan had not sounded the alarm on human-to-human transmission.
Tedros made the remark at the global health body’s regular news briefing on Monday, when he was asked how it responded to and acted on Taiwan’s e-mail on Dec. 31 last year warning about potential human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.
“News resources today indicate that at least seven atypical pneumonia cases were reported in Wuhan, China. Their health authorities replied to the media that the cases were believed not SARS; however, the samples are still under examination, and cases have been isolated for treatment. I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us,” the Centers for Disease Control said in the e-mail.
Photo: Reuters
When he revealed the e-mail’s existence on April 11, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said in Taipei that “isolated for treatment” implies that health experts should be on guard about human-to-human transmission of a disease.
“There was no reference made in that query to anything other than what had been previously reported in news media,” WHO Health Emergencies Program executive director Michael Ryan told Monday’s news conference, after summarizing the content of the e-mail.
When the news conference’s coordinator signaled that they were ready to take another reporter’s question, Tedros said that he wanted to make his stance clear again.
“The first e-mail was not from Taiwan. Many other countries have already, well, asked for clarification. The first report came from Wuhan, from China itself,” Tedros said. “Taiwan didn’t report any human-to-human transmission. This has to be clear.”
“The e-mail from Taiwan, like other entities, was to ask for clarification. Nothing else,” he said.
Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) yesterday said in a statement that the key is how the WHO Secretariat assessed and responded to the reports it received, rather than which nation filed the report first.
The WHO Secretariat should further explain what reports it had received at the onset of the disease last year and how it acted on the reports, she said.
Taiwan’s report to the WHO Secretariat was fulfilling its responsibility to maintain the global healthcare system, Ou said, again urging the WHO to adhere to its founding purpose and help all nations contain the “Wuhan pneumonia” crisis with professionalism and impartiality.
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