Report confirms suspicions on China’s Covid response

A World Health Organisation independent review of China’s early response to the COVID-19 outbreak has reached the same conclusion as US investigators, and has confirmed the suspicions of Australia. This is that Chinese authorities did not respond quickly or forcefully enough when the first cases of the novel coronavirus became apparent. The slow response allowed the virus to spread globally with devastating consequences. With much of the world in the grip of a deadly second wave of the pandemic, it is imperative that a team of investigators now in quarantine in China is allowed to fully investigate how the Wuhan outbreak started and what can be done to stop it happening again.

Australia played a high-profile role in calling for an open investigation into the genesis of COVID-19, and its diplomatic and trade relations with China have suffered as a result. China has accused Australia of doing the bidding of the US at a time when trade between the two countries was in free fall. For most Australians, however, the issue is more clear cut. For any fair-minded person, it is only natural that every effort be made to establish what went wrong and why. From this perspective, comments on Wednesday by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese critical of Australia’s outspoken demands for an inquiry can be seen both as opportunistic and craven. Mr Albanese says there has been an absence of leadership from the Morrison government on how Australia is working with the WHO and key countries to ensure our resilience to future pandemics. He says Australia has burned capital with a poorly managed call for an inquiry, which was always going to take place. Albanese says the government sought a splashy announcement, when it should have been doing the behind-the-scenes diplomatic work to generate global support for a thorough investigation. On the evidence to date, Mr Albanese’s appraisal lacks credibility.

The World Health Organisation has rightly been criticised for being too close to China and acting too slowly for fear of upsetting the communist regime. Many questions still remain about the future of the WHO’s funding, as well as the organisation’s impartiality and competence.

Criticisms of the body have been confirmed by investigations undertaken by the WHO’s own Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The panel was appointed by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said he could not imagine “two more strong-minded, independent leaders to help guide us through this critical learning process”.

The panel reported on Monday that China had been too slow to act and was critical of the World Health Organisation for not declaring an international emergency until January 30. It said public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January. The report said when evidence emerged of human-to-human transmission in other parts of the world, it was ignored. The panel questioned why the WHO’s Emergency Committee did not meet until the third week of January and did not declare an international emergency until its second meeting at the end of that month. “Though the term pandemic is neither used nor defined in the International Health Regulations (2005), its use does serve to focus attention on the gravity of a health event. It was not until March 11 that WHO used the term,” the report said.

Australia took action to close its international borders before a formal pandemic declaration was made by the WHO, limiting the initial spread of the virus. Dr Yi-Chun Lo, of ­Taiwan’s Centres for Disease Control, has said the pandemic could have been avoided at the beginning if China was transparent about the outbreak and was quick to provide necessary information to the world.

The WHO panel has called for a “global reset” and said that it would make recommendations in a final report to health ministers from the WHO’s 194 member states in May. Ms Sirleaf and Ms Clark noted repeatedly that the WHO’s ability to enforce its advice, or enter countries to investigate the source of disease outbreaks, is severely curtailed. They said the pandemic had shown that the WHO’s member states must act swiftly to reform the agency, boost its funding, and give it powers to enforce international health regulations. Before it gets more powers and funding, however, the WHO must demonstrate that it is up to the task.

A useful measure will be the outcome of a major international effort to establish how the virus started. A team of 13 international scientists working under the auspices of the WHO is currently in quarantine in China preparing to investigate the likely origins of the virus. China has been unco-operative to date and is bristling at calls from the US that the WHO’s expert team of investigators be allowed to interview “care givers, former patients and lab workers” in the central city of Wuhan. The head of the US delegation, Garrett Grigsby, said China should share all scientific studies of animal, human and environmental samples taken from a market in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have emerged in late 2019. Comparing these samples would help tracing efforts to establish the source.

The director-general of the health emergency response office of China’s National Health Commission says the studies need co-ordination and co-operation rather than political pressure. But as the death toll continues to mount around the world, and lockdowns cripple major economies, it is China that must be prepared to co-operate. China’s silencing of whistleblower doctors and journalists who have attempted to bring unwelcome facts to light reflects badly on Beijing. However uncomfortable, the truth must be known on the origins of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc but could have been stopped before it took root.