China’s refusal to provide raw information on early cases of new coronavirus infections raises concerns. Proposals to sign a global “pandemic treaty” to ensure greater transparency of future pandemic information have attracted widespread attention.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson supports such an international “pandemic treaty” on international epidemics. The treaty is intended to enable countries to agree to share data on outbreaks of viruses and infectious diseases.
Johnson expressed support for such a proposal on Monday (Feb. 15) after the U.K. and the U.S. expressed concern about the level of information available to a World health Organization team of experts traveling to China to examine the origins of the new coronavirus.
“I think what the world needs to see is a general agreement on how we track data around zoonotic disease pandemics,” the British prime minister said at a news conference.
Johnson said a proposal to sign a global pandemic treaty seemed attractive to him. He said signatories to such a treaty would ensure they provide all the information they have, which would allow “us to gain insight into what happened and stop it from happening again.”
Johnson said, “It’s the smart thing to do.”
Johnson is not the first to call for more transparency in pandemic outbreaks by signing a global treaty, and in December, European Council President Charles Michel called for “an international treaty on pandemics within the framework of the World Health Organization.”
Concerns about pandemic transparency emerged at a Time when the delayed trip to China of a WHO expert team investigating the origin of the new coronavirus also raised widespread concerns. The WHO and Beijing held lengthy negotiations for the investigation team to travel to China until last month, a year after the outbreak of the new coronavirus in Wuhan, when it was allowed to do so.
After four weeks of investigation, the team said it was “very likely” that the new coronavirus originated in animals and was transmitted from animals to humans. The experts largely dismissed the notion that the virus came out of a laboratory. However, one of the experts revealed that China refused their request for raw data on early cases of infection.
The White House is “deeply concerned” about how the WHO report on the new coronavirus investigation is being rolled out.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC on Sunday that Britain was also concerned about their ability to get full cooperation and get the answers they need.
China has not yet responded to the comments. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last week that the findings of the WHO mission in China and the findings of Chinese experts provided important clues.
China has repeatedly stressed that the new coronavirus could have originated elsewhere.
Britain currently holds the presidency of the Group of Seven countries. The group will push for such a treaty at a meeting on Friday.
In a statement Saturday, the British government said Johnson “will call for an approach to new global epidemics that draws on lessons from the sector.”
Johnson said he would seek to work with other G-7 leaders to implement the five-point plan announced at the U.N. General Assembly last year, including a worldwide research center for zoonotic diseases, the development of global manufacturing capacity for treatments and vaccines, the design of an early warning system for global pandemics, a global agreement on future health emergencies and the reduction of trade barriers.
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