WHO walks back on pandemic timeline and its credibility

TO properly judge statements on the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic coming from the World Health Organization (WHO), we believe it is prudent to always treat such statements with skepticism.

We are constrained to issue this cautionary note because, first, the WHO has lately taken time to publicize the fact that the Philippines has recorded the highest number of Covid-19 infections in the Western Pacific region and that we, Filipinos, must brace for crucial weeks ahead in the ongoing health crisis; and, second, WHO this week officially walked back several important statements that it had made concerning China’s handling of the viral outbreak. It has changed its official timeline on Covid-19.

Last Wednesday, the WHO warned the Philippines that the coming few weeks would be crucial for the country because the organization had observed an increase in Covid-19 cases and hospital occupancy as quarantine restrictions were eased in several areas in the country.

Dr. Takeshi Kasai, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, told the ABS-CBN network that while they recognized the Philippine government’s hard work in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, the numbers showed continuing infections.

Our government expressed displeasure over the WHO statements that the country appeared to have the fastest rising number of Covid-19 cases in the region, based on WHO Western Pacific data.

Are Philippine authorities correct to express dismay over the WHO pronouncements?

We think they have good reason to do so.

Last Tuesday, the WHO backtracked on its assertion that the Chinese government had alerted the United Nations agency about the coronavirus outbreak.

The WHO quietly updated its “Timeline of WHO’s response to Covid-19” following the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans’ mid-June “Interim Report on Origins of Covid-19 Pandemic” (led by ranking member and China Task Force Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas), which concluded that “despite public reporting to the contrary...China never notified the WHO about the outbreak in Wuhan.” The change was spotted by McCaul and first reported by the WashingtonFreeBeacon.

“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 (Chinese Communist Party) never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO regulations,” McCaul said in a statement to the WashingtonExaminer.

McCaul’s June report said the WHO found out about the coronavirus outbreak when Chinese media reports about an atypical pneumonia outbreak began to leak online and that the organization also discovered a post on the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, a US-based open-access platform for early intelligence about outbreaks, on the last day of 2019.

Yet WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on January 30 sought to downplay early warnings of the outbreak. He declared on January 30: “The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive and beyond words.” He called it a “new standard of outbreak response.”

Concerning talk of early warnings about the outbreak coming from Taiwan, the WHO director-general said: “The report first came from China — that’s fact No. 1 — from Wuhan itself.”

This week, the Associated Press (AP) reported on how the WHO had lied to the world about China’s initial cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak. Those lies, which delayed other countries’ responses to the virus, caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.

The AP gained access to recordings of internal WHO meetings in January. Those recordings capture WHO officials discussing keeping China’s secretive conduct under wraps, even as the WHO kept praising China publicly. That sugarcoating left the world unaware and unprepared for the pandemic about to hit.

What has this got to do with us in the Philippines? It places in doubt the soundness of WHO advice and information on our pandemic situation.

The WHO needs to fix its public communications. Filipinos would be foolish to be panicked by WHO’s statements on the Covid situation in the country, which could be just as hollow as its praise of China.