‘A huge mistake’: Peter Dutton lashes World Health Organisation amid coronavirus cover-up revelation
Peter Dutton has backed a review into Australia’s ties with the World Health Organisation as he lashed the UN agency’s support for China’s wet markets, while explosive new documents revealed authorities delayed announcing the impending pandemic.
Coronavirus
Don't miss out on the headlines from Coronavirus. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Peter Dutton has savaged the World Health Organisation (WHO) over Chinese live animal markets, backing a review of Australia’s links to United Nations bodies.
But the home affairs minister warned against following US President Donald Trump’s move pulling funding for the WHO during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Dutton believes Australia cutting ties with the UN’s health agency could risk other countries making strategic advances as poorer Pacific nations deal with devastating outbreaks.
“It’s important for us not to let other countries use this as an opportunity to influence their leverage within some of these communities,” he told 2GB radio on Thursday.
An incredulous Mr Dutton said the WHO needed to be called out for backing the reopening of China’s wet markets where the virus is likely to have been transmitted to humans.
“I think it’s a huge mistake and they need to reassess what their advice is,” he said.
He said it was clear through a number of instances, including the SARS outbreak, that wet markets were a significant problem.
“China needs to change some of its ways including in relation to the wet markets and the way in which that has led to the spread of disease,” he said.
Mr Dutton said the government was prepared to call out the WHO and other UN bodies, while also reassessing their actions.
“I think there’s been a big wake-up call out of coronavirus,” he said.
The minister has been a frequent critic of the UN’s refugee agency in retaliation to savage assessments of Australia’s border protection policies. “There are other bodies within the UN that I would argue aren’t acting in the global interest, aren’t acting certainly in the interest of Australia,” Mr Dutton said.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Australia would leverage off its membership of the WHO to push for reform.
“It does important work in our region and we want to see that continue,” he told ABC radio.
“The practical solutions provided by the WHO locally are much more beneficial than some of the political decisions they have taken centrally.”
MORE NEWS:
Morrison didn’t deserve to win: Turnbull
Lucas dumped from charity after anti-vax controversy
Ask The Expert: Your property market questions answered
PM looks at easing of restrictions as Rudd blasts Trump
A group of Australian professors who work at centres that collaborate with the WHO have criticised the US for withdrawing funding.
“We are unanimous in thinking that this defunding of WHO is a global health disaster (that) will result in thousands of additional and potentially preventable deaths from COVID-19,” they said in a statement.
CHINA ‘DIDN’T WARN PUBLIC’ OF LIKELY PANDEMIC FOR SIX DAYS
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicentre of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began travelling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.
President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, January 20. But by that time, more than 3000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.
Six days.
That delay from January 14 to January 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.
But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time – the beginning of the outbreak. China’s attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected more than two million people and taken more than 128,000 lives.
“This is tremendous,” said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”
Other experts noted that the Chinese government may have waited on warning the public to stave off hysteria, and that it did act quickly in private during that time.
But the six-day delay by China’s leaders in Beijing came on top of almost two weeks during which the national Center for Disease Control did not register any cases from local officials, internal bulletins obtained by the AP confirm. Yet during that time, from January 5 to January 17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country.
SHOCKING VIDEO EMERGES OF WUHAN WET MARKETS
It comes as live crayfish are being sold in wet markets in Wuhan – the epicentre of the coronavirus – days after reopening to the public.
After months of strict lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19, Chinese media shows residents returning to normal life, with 90 per cent of stalls operating at Baishazhou Agricultural Products Market.
Among the footage of residents conversing, live crayfish and crabs are shown squirming in baskets. However, selling live wild animals and livestock is now banned.
Baishazhou is one of the city’s main food wholesale markets, sprawling 116 acres.
COVID-19 is believed to have originated at another wet market in Wuhan, called Huanan; however, this is not confirmed.
While Huanan remains closed, visitors to Baishazhou are now required to show they have to tested negative to COVID-19 prior to entering the markets.
Their temperature must also be taken, according to local media.
Currently customer numbers are just 10 per cent of what the market – known as the biggest trading place for live crayfish in China – had last year.
It is currently selling 30 tonnes of the crustacean a day, compared to 120 tonnes in previous years.
OUTRAGE OVER MOVE TO REOPEN CHINA’S WET MARKETS
The footage comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison takes a swipe at the World Health Organisation for backing China’s right to reopen its wet markets.
Mr Morrison said on Tuesday it was “unfathomable” WHO supported live animal markets, which the UN body claimed was a source of livelihood and food security for China’s vast population.
Despite the virus, COVID-19 has now infected 1.9 million people and killed 120,000 in 215 countries – having originated in Wuhan, where those wet markets opened on the weekend after being closed in January.
“I’m totally puzzled by this decision,” Mr Morrison said.
“We need to protect the world against potential sources of outbreaks of these types of viruses. It has happened too many times.”
The prime minister said the world was looking to WHO to play a central role in putting in place measures to ensure another pandemic does not happen.
“Australia and the world will be looking to organisations like the WHO to ensure lessons are learned from the devastating coronavirus outbreak,” he said.
“There must be transparency in understanding how it began in Wuhan and how it was transmitted.
“We also need to fully understand and protect against the global health threat posed by places like wet markets.”
World-leading authority on viral evolution Professor Eddie Holmes said the sale of mammalian species caged and working in such close contact with humans was a particular problem.
“That’s the critical thing, these are wildlife they’re not farmed animals, they’re not domestic animals, these are wildlife animals,” the Australian Academy of Science fellow said.
“So the problem is that obviously if that wildlife animal has a virus it’s picked up from a bat itself and we’re interacting with them in the market situation, there’s a good chance the virus will then spread to the person handling the animal and that person will then go home and then spread it to someone else and et cetera and we have an outbreak, and that’s kind of what we think most likely happened here.”
A wet market in Guilin, China, selling dog meat as well as live dogs for slaughter. #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/P8cJLeJmvs
— Bobbi Fotsch (@BobbiFotsch) April 10, 2020
He said the simplest solution was reducing exposure to wildlife.
“Particularly in these market situations, illegal wildlife trading, we have to build simple barriers by, I will suggest, closing these wet markets down, really stopping the trade in wildlife species,” Professor Holmes said.
“Now people argue, ‘oh maybe it’ll go underground’ but anything that reduces the number of these and therefore reduces the exposure of humans to wildlife viruses must be a good thing.”
Wuhan is to spend more than $30 million to upgrade its 425 “farmer’s” markets to improve hygiene but fears exist this will not be enough.
China’s top legislature has also said it was looking at banning the trade and consumption of wild animals with the city of Shenzhen last week going a step further and declaring cats and dogs as domestic pets and therefore not to be eaten.
But ahead of any national law changes coming into effect, wet markets were now set to reopen with the backing of the WHO.
WHO said wet markets, common across Asia, could be made safe as a food source “with adequate facilities, proper regulation and good hygiene practices”.
Health Minister Greg Hunt is also unsettled by wet markets reopening.
“There is a very real likelihood that this disease arose from a wet market in Wuhan – it’s clear that these are dangerous vectors,” Mr Hunt told the ABC.
“So we might disagree on this issue with some of the international authorities, but our job is to protect Australians, and I would imagine that around the world, the vast majority of people would have a similar view.”
More than 200 conservation groups from around the world last month sent WHO an open letter calling for markets to exclude wildlife from their endorsement.
The US National Institute of Health has also called for wet markets to close.
“I mean it boggles my mind when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human animal interface that we don’t just shut it down. I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that,” director Dr Anthony Fauci said.