WHO to review covid response after Trump attack
20 May, 2020
The World Health Organization said it would launch an independent overview of its response to the coronavirus pandemic but President Donald Trump renewed his attack on the global body, branding it a "puppet of China" and threatening a long term freeze on US funding.
Washington is locked in an increasingly bitter spat with Beijing over the brand new coronavirus pandemic and in addition has taken aim at the WHO, which on Monday kicked off its first-ever virtual assembly.
An answer tabled by europe needed an "impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of the international response to the pandemic, which has so far infected almost 4.8 million persons and killed a lot more than 317,000.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged there have been shortcomings and told the virtual assembly he welcomed demands a review.
"I will initiate an unbiased evaluation at the initial appropriate moment to examine experience gained and lessons learned, and make recommendations to improve national and global pandemic preparedness and response," he said.
"But a very important factor is abundantly clear. The world must never be the same.
"We do not desire a review to reveal that people must all do everything inside our capacity to ensure this never happens again," Tedros said.
A wide variety of country leaders and health ministers hailed the WHO's efforts but US health secretary Alex Azar said its "failure" to obtain and provide vital information on COVID-19 had cost lives.
"We should be frank about among the primary reasons this outbreak spun uncontrollable: there was a failure by this organisation to obtain the information that the world needed, and that failure cost many lives," Azar said in a video address to the WHO's main gross annual meeting.
Source: