Home ›› 11 May 2020 ›› World Biz
The World Health Organisation (WHO) rebuted a German media report on Sunday alleging that during a phone call in January, Chinese President Xi Jinping personally asked the organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom to 'delay a global warning' regarding the Covid-19 outbreak.
The German news outlet, Der Spiegel, published a report citing intelligence from the country’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as the ‘Bundesnachrichtendienst’ (BND), that China “urged” the WHO to “delay a global warning” about the coronavirus outbreak.
As per the report, the intelligence found that Xi and Tedros spoke by phone on January 21 during which the Chinese President “urged” the WHO chief to “hold back information about a human-to-human transmission and to delay a pandemic warning.” “The BND estimates that China’s information policy lost four to six weeks to fight the virus worldwide,” the report further added.
The WHO refuted media claims by saying that reports of a January 21 phone call between the WHO chief and President Xi were unfounded and untrue. They didn't speak on January 21 and have never spoken via phone. Such inaccurate reports distract & detract from the WHO's and global efforts to end Covid-19, said an official tweet from the WHO.
China confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus on January 20, the WHO added in a follow-up tweet.
Some Twitter users also raised suspicions regarding the report as they believe the alleged cover-up makes no sense particularly when the Chinese government had already publicly revealed human-to-human transmission the day before. Also, there was no information relevant to such a call on the official timeline of China's Covid-19 response that the Chinese government released on April 6.
"Groundless and false reports are also part of a disinformation campaign being waged against China by some Western media and politicians," Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for US Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday. Such a campaign has been fueled by US-led anti-China sentiment and rhetoric which has been escalating in recent weeks as the pandemic continued worsening.
On January 20, the National Health Commission held a press conference for the high-level expert team headed by Zhong Nanshan, who on the team's behalf confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus and advised people not to go to Wuhan except for extremely important reasons, according to the official timeline. On January 21, Zhong said at another press briefing that "since it is known that the virus can be transmitted from people to people, one thing to do is to strictly quarantine patients and track close contacts, which is probably the most important thing."
China has also been sharing information with the WHO publicly from January 3.
(Source: Indian Express/Global Times)
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