Pandemic surpasses 15M cases
GENEVA — Unfounded U.S. charges that China controls U.N. health chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus could hamper the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic that has now surpassed 15 million cases, he said on Thursday in Geneva.
According to several media reports, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told British lawmakers in London this week that China had “bought” Tedros.
On Wednesday, Pompeo alleged in a Danish television interview that the Geneva-based World Health Organization had “become corrupt.”
“The comments are untrue and unacceptable and without any foundation,” Tedros said.
The world and the WHO must not become distracted by such comments from fighting the pandemic, he said.
“One of the greatest threats we face continues to be the politicization of the pandemic,” Tedros warned. “COVID politics should be quarantined.”
The United States, Brazil and India account for nearly half of the global pandemic tally of 15 million cases.
WHO emergency operations chief Mike Ryan said that the world expects these three major countries to act as global leaders in this crisis.
“These countries are not only important in their own right, they are very important regional and global beacons of doing the right thing,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump decided in May that his country would give up its WHO membership and would suspend its financial contributions, as he charged that the organization had responded too slowly to COVID-19, and that it helped to cover up China’s outbreak.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro had initially downplayed the novel coronavirus as “a little flu,” causing confusion among the population about the seriousness of the disease. Bolsonaro has tested positive for COVID19.
India had imposed the world’s biggest lockdown in late March but had to change its strategy after the measure severely damaged the economy, leaving the poorest the hardesthit.
Ryan acknowledged that large numbers of cases were to be expected in the world’s most populous countries.
In recent weeks, Tedros has been increasingly urging citizens around the world to do what they can to fight the pandemic, while warning against the dangers of political inaction and mixed messages from authorities.
People must be acutely aware that their everyday actions have an impact on the course of the pandemic, he said on Thursday.
“We are asking everyone to treat the decisions about where they go, what they do and who they meet with as life-and-death decisions — because they are,” the U.N. health chief said.
“It may not be your life, but your choices could be the difference between life and death for someone you love, or for a complete stranger,” he added.