Don’t Blame Us For COVID-19 Deaths, We Warned Early Enough-WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that it has maintained transparency and accountability in informing the world about the dangers of the Coronavirus as early as possible.
“From the beginning, WHO has acted quickly and decisively to respond and to warn the world; we sounded the alarm early, and we sounded it often,” WHO’s Director General,Tedros Adhanom, said in a press briefing in Geneva.
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At the moment, there are about 225,136 covid-19 deaths and 986,314 recoveries, out of 3,183,982 infections , according to latest Worldometer figures.
But WHO’s DG said that the spread would not have been massive if the world had taken them serious at the initial stage.
“We said repeatedly that the world had a window of opportunity to prepare and to prevent widespread community transmission.
“We started our early press conference; people were saying the world will be tired of you if you’re making a press conference every day, but we didn’t mind,” he said.
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Buttressing more, Tedros Adhanom said that though China reported that there were no evidence that the virus could be transferred from human-to-human, WHO, through its past experience with coronaviruses, emphasized that human-to-human transmission was likely.
“This is in line with our practice of reporting to the world information that countries report to us; we post country reports as it is,” he said.
Recall that Trump had accused the global health agency of covering for China and for not sending an independent team to investigate the matter in China.
But Adhanom said that the organization’s team actually visited Wuhan and had indepth knowledge about the virus.
“On the 20th and 21st of January, WHO staff visited Wuhan, and on the 22nd, reported that the evidence suggested human-to-human transmission was occurring,” he said.
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He said that in three months since the Emergency Committee last met, WHO has worked day in, day out supporting countries and saving lives.
His statement reads in part:
“We’ve worked with countries to help them prepare and respond.
“We’ve brought countries together to share experiences and lessons learned.
“We’ve brought together thousands of experts to analyze the evolving evidence and distil it into guidance.
“We’ve convened researchers to identify priorities, from all over the world.
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“We’ve launched a large international trial to find answers fast about which drugs are the most effective.
“We’ve brought together a consortium of countries and partners to accelerate the development and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
“We’ve shipped millions of test kits and tons of protective gear all around the world, focusing on those countries who need our support most.
“We’ve trained more than 2 million health workers – to be exact, 2.3 million health workers around the world. We don’t think that’s enough, we will train more.”
