During the mid-December the Chinese city Wuhan had a considerable rise of respiratory infection causing breathing problems, sore throat and high temperature. Throughout the January WHO reputedly praised China for their cooperation on the new virus which is spreading on an increasing rate. However, the background reality was completely different, the significant delay on providing the needed information by the Chinese government has triggered a sense of frustration among the top officials of the WHO. A startling investigation was done by the Associated Press which revealed China deliberately tried to suppress information on the new deadly virus and showed WHO’s helplessness over China.
China sat on releasing the genetic map or genome of the virus for more than a week after three of the government labs fully decoded the information. The Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on Jan.11. Even then China delayed two weeks providing WHO, the data on patients and cases, according to the recordings obtained by AP of the internal meeting of the United Health Agency through January. WHO continued to praise China Publicly to obtain information, however they were disappointed over China’s response to the Virus.
The race to find the genome of the virus started in the late December when the doctors in Wuhan noticed a significant rise of pneumonia type cases with increasing patients at the hospitals. According to the recordings of the WHO’s internal meeting. On December 31 WHO came to know about the new virus from an open source platform and on first January they officially requested for more information on the new virus. Under the international law members should respond within 24-48 hours, China reported two days later that there were 44 cases and no deaths.
Shi Zhengli, a reputed virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has previously traced SARS virus had decoded the entire virus by Jan 2 and published it on her institute’s website. She was barred by the official for sharing further information as the private labs cannot experiment with deadly viruses; only state owned labs have such permission.
On January 9. A 61-year-old man died of the new virus and the death was reported on 11 Jan. Till then WHO didn’t have any proper information from the Chinese Government. They came to know about the Virus from the Thai officials when they traced a woman with the following symptoms at the airport and tested positive. On Jan 13th WHO announced the first case in Thailand which jolted the Chinese officials and they started to prepare for a state of pandemic.
The director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus along with a team of top officials visited China with a list of requests to the Chinese government for full cooperation on the pandemic which is a very rare case where the top officials visiting a country in response to a particular case. At the end of the trip Tedros praised China for the full cooperation irrespective of the initial delay. The next day WHO finally declared an international health emergency.
“We should have actually expressed our respect and gratitude to china for what it’s doing”, Tedros Said. “It has already done incredible things to limit transmission of the virus to other Countries”.
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