WHO officials criticise China for lack of Covid info in leaked video
Leaked audio reveals top WHO officials ‘secretly criticised China for not providing information about coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic’
- Three WHO officials reportedly complained about the lack of data from China
- The internal conversation allegedly occurred at the beginning of the pandemic
- One official urged his colleagues to put pressure on Beijing to be forthcoming
- Another confessed ‘we could get nothing’ after asking China about the virus
- The WHO has come under heavy criticism over its handling of the pandemic
Top officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) secretly criticised China for not providing information about the novel coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic, leaked audio files have revealed.
The recordings, published by Indian TV channel WION, purport to capture Dr Mike Ryan – who is in charge of WHO’s response to Covid – complaining to colleagues during the second week of January that China was not being open with its data.
Comparing the situation to the Sars outbreak in 2003, Ryan can be heard saying: ‘This is exactly the same scenario, endlessly trying to get updates from China… and then, bang.’
If genuine, then Ryan’s private comments sharply contrast with public statements made by WHO director general Dr Tedros just two weeks later when he praised China’s ‘commitment to transparency’ which he called ‘beyond words’.
Dr Michael Ryan (pictured on March 9, 2020), Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies Programme, urged his colleagues to ‘shift gears’ and put more pressure on China to be forthcoming about the virus at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, reported WION
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove (left), the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, and Dr Gauden Galea (right), the WHO’s China Representative, were also caught on audio files expressing extreme frustration over the lack of information from China, India-based WION reported in late January
The novel coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in December, 2019 before spreading globally. It has killed more than 2,316,683 people so far. In the picture above, a medical staff attends to an ICU patient at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, on April 11, 2020
Dr Ryan could also be criticising Chinese medics who told the WHO that there was ‘no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission’ of the virus.
Their statement was parroted wholesale by the WHO, which put out a tweet using the exact same phrasing on January 14 last year.
Comparing the situation to the 2018 Ebola outbreak in Congo, Ryan said: ‘General ‘there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission’ is not good enough.
‘This would not happen in Congo and did not happen in Congo and other places.
‘We need to see the data, we need to be able to determine for ourselves the geographic distribution, the timeline, the epicurve and all of that, it is absolutely important at this point.’
In another clip Ryan appears to say that the data is necessary ‘to protect China’, though the exact context of this remark is unclear.
The news comes after the Chinese whistleblower who first sounded the alarm about coronavirus spreading in Wuhan was remembered a year after his death.
Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at a hospital in the city, became one of the most visible figures in the early days of the outbreak when he tried to warn the world, but was reprimanded by police for ‘spreading rumours’.
The 34-year-old’s death from the virus on February 7, 2020 led to an outpouring of public mourning and rare expressions of anger online.
Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang blew the whistle on the mysterious new coronavirus in December 2019 and died in February 2020 after contracting the virus from a patient. Mourners laid flowers outside his former workplace over the weekend to pay tribute to the brave doctor
The news also comes as a WHO team is researching the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan – a year after the virus ravaged the city of 11million before spreading globally.
Members of the WHO team in Wuhan have repeatedly applauded China for its cooperation over their investigation into the origin of the virus, with one British expert claiming that they were given full access to all sites they had requested.
The WHO has been accused of acting ‘too slow’ in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and showing political bias towards China.
Its Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last year heaped praises on the country’s Communist Party for its response to COVID-19, hailing the regime’s ‘commitment to transparency’ and saying the speed with which it detected the virus was ‘beyond words’.
But a report by WION showed that behind closed doors, WHO officials appeared to be extremely frustrated by China’s failure to provide the agency with information at the beginning of the global health crisis.
The WHO has been accused of acting ‘too slow’ in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and showing political bias towards China. Its Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (centre, pictured on March 9, 2020) has heaped praises on the country’s Communist Party
The explosive revelation, aired on January 27, included audio clips of top WHO officials, including its Executive Director for Health Emergencies Programme Dr Michael Ryan, Technical Lead Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, and Representative in China Dr Gauden Galea, according to WION.
The recordings reportedly captured the WHO’s internal conversations about the novel coronavirus in the second week of January after Wuhan had reported 59 cases of what was then known as the ‘mysterious pneumonia’.
In one of the recordings said to be of Dr Michael Ryan, he told his colleagues to ‘shift gears’ and put more pressure on China to be forthcoming about the outbreak.
He compared the situation to the SARS pandemic, which broke out in China’s Guangdong Province in 2002. The Chinese government was widely accused of covering up its SARS outbreak, which later spread to two dozen countries and killed 774 people.
Dr Ryan reportedly warned his colleagues about what seemed to be a repeat of the withholding strategy by the Chinese government.
He said: ‘This is exactly the same scenario… WHO barely got out of that one with its neck intact given the issue it arose around the transparency in southern China.’
Another audio file purported to show Dr Ryan complaining about the lack of data from Beijing, especially those about the virus’s contagiousness.
‘We need to see the data. We need to be able to determine for ourselves, the geographic distribution, the timeline, the epicurve and all of that,’ the recording played.
The WHO official can be heard saying such a move was ‘absolutely important at this point’ and its aim was for the WHO to ‘protect China’.
A third recording was alleged to be of Dr Maria Van Kerkhove who complained about having ‘very minimal information’ about the situation.
‘Knowing a little bit about ventilation and ICU and ECMO and deaths is helpful, but I know it’s clearly not enough for you to do proper planning in the way that you would like to,’ she was quoted stating.
The most revealing clip came from Dr Gauden Galea, the WHO’s top man in China, who complained about not getting the specifics from Beijing, reported WION.
A WHO team is currently researching the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan. A security guard is pictured waving at journalists telling them to clear the road after a convoy carrying the WHO team entered the controversial Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan on January 31
Members of the WHO team in Wuhan have repeatedly applauded China for its cooperation over their investigation into the origin of the virus. British-born zoologist Peter Daszak (pictured bumping fists with a colleague in Wuhan) said the team were given full access
Dr Galea was cited saying that his team had been formally and informally requesting epidemiological information, ‘especially what was the date of onset of the last case’.
‘But all we are getting in return for that question is there is a new update that’s going to come out,’ Dr Galea confessed. He added that when his team asked for specifics, ‘we could get nothing’.
WION reported that Dr Galea claimed his team were getting information from China just 15 minutes before it would appear on the state broadcaster CCTV.
In a separate audio file recorded in mid-to-late January, Dr Galea was quoted acknowledging discussions in China that the disease could be passed from humans to humans.
Just days earlier, the WHO had assured the public that the virus was unlikely to be transmissible.
‘Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,’ the organisation tweeted.
In the recording released by WION, Dr Galea explained of the U-turn: ‘They are now talking openly and consistently about human-to-human… Their one key request in this regard is that they would like WHO’s help in communicating this to the public, without causing panic.’
On January 22, the WHO’s China mission issued a statement confirming that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan. But the team said more investigation was needed to understand the full extent of transmission.
The WHO has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the pandemic, including accusations from former US President Trump that it parroted Chinese propaganda, hindering early global efforts to control the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 2,316,683 people so far.
Dr Michael Ryan was quoted complaining about the lack of data from China. ‘We need to see the data. We need to be able to determine for ourselves, the geographic distribution, the timeline, the epicurve and all of that,’ an audio file released by Indian TV channel WION played
Last month, an independent panel found that the WHO was too slow to react to the pandemic and is a powerless body unable to ‘enforce anything’.
An investigation into the WHO’s pandemic response found the UN health body’s failings could largely be attributed to the agency’s weak position, with the probe’s report saying more funding and reforms were desperately needed.
The heads of the WHO-backed Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response presented the findings to the WHO’s executive board on January 19.
While the panel’s report suggested the WHO should have acted faster and more decisively at the start, former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stressed that ‘the bottom line is the WHO has no powers to enforce anything or investigate… within a country.’