The World health Organization (WHO) held its Executive Board meeting on January 18. The United States, the European Union and Australia all stressed the importance of going to China to trace the source of the virus, and the United States even publicly said that only China could succeed by handing over information, but China then spoke up and appealed to “stop political pressure outside of science. The 148th Executive Board (EB) of the World Health Organization (WHO) will be held from 18 to 26 in a full video conference, where public health departments will focus heavily on professional issues such as effective epidemic prevention, vaccine distribution and outbreak review.
During the discussion of the agenda for preparedness and response to public health emergencies, several countries came forward to speak out against the WHO-led international team of experts to conduct the New Crown Traceability Initiative in China, expressing concern about the transparency of this work.
First, Garrett Grigsby, director of the Office of Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health, said it has been eight months since WHO member states unanimously passed a resolution in May 2020 calling for an expeditious investigation into the source of the outbreak, and the mission finally arrived in China last week, but the results will only be available if the Chinese authorities hand over the information in their possession.
Grigsby further said that the information includes the Wuhan South China seafood market outbreak case of the virus gene sequencing, animal test results, back to 2019 experiments and serum and other research content, and allows the investigation team to access medical care, patients and laboratory personnel.
He stressed that as variant viruses continue to emerge, scientists worldwide must be able to openly and instantly share information such as genetic sequencing and samples of viruses, which is very important.
In addition, he publicly thanked the United Kingdom and South Africa for “immediate, open and detailed” sharing of variant virus-related analysis, as well as Brazil, Japan and Mexico for “rapid and transparent” sharing of variant virus information.
Speaking on behalf of the EU, Austrian Ambassador to Geneva Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger said that WHO is the scientific organization for global health and that investigating and understanding the origin of the virus will enable the world to better control and respond to the pandemic and future health threats.
The EU believes that the international expert team was finally allowed to travel to China and cooperate with China in the investigation, and the EU attaches great importance to this investigation, stressing the need for transparency and access to relevant sites to obtain data, and asking WHO to keep it regularly informed of progress.
The representative of Australia mentioned that the international expert team had arrived in China and was looking forward to receiving relevant information, and that Australia attached great importance to transparency and requested WHO to report regularly on this.
The representative of China, on the other hand, first appreciated the tireless efforts of WHO in the response to the outbreak and considered WHO’s response to be effective, and then mentioned that since the outbreak, China has been releasing information on the outbreak in an open, transparent and responsible manner.
The main responsibility of the WHO Executive Committee is to implement the decisions and policies of the World Health Assembly, and to provide advice to the World Health Assembly and promote related work.
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