'China Didn't Alert Us On Coronavirus Outbreak, Our Local Office Did': WHO's U-Turn On China's Handling Of Covid-19

The World Health Organisation has said that it was alerted about the first cases of 'viral pneumonia' by its local office in China and not by Beijing.

"The Country Office notified the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point in the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office about the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission media statement of the cases and provided a translation of it," WHO said in the 30 June update on "Timeline of WHO's Response To Covid-19".

In its previous timeline update in April which has now been archived, the global health body had said that a cluster of cases of pneumonia were reported in Wuhan on 31 December.

"Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified," it said.

However, it was unclear who notified the global health body regarding the initial outbreak of Coronavirus.

The archived timeline stated that on 1 January, "WHO had put itself on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak..."

However in the 30 June timeline update, "Emergency footing" has been rephrased into "coordinating activities" and an addition has been made, WION news reported.

"WHO activated its Incident Management Support Team (IMST), as part of its emergency response framework, which ensures coordination of activities and response across the three levels of WHO (Headquarters, Regional, Country) for public health emergencies," the global health body said in 30 June update.

In the April update, there was no mention of China providing information about the outbreak on 3 January.

However, in the June update, WHO said, "Chinese officials provided information to WHO on the cluster of cases of ‘viral pneumonia of unknown cause’ identified in Wuhan" on 3 January.

It should be noted that WHO has been criticised by United States President Donald Trump for failing to provide the information needed to stem the pandemic. He had accused the organisation of being "very China-centric" and covering up the spread of Coronavirus.

The Trump administration in April this year suspended over 400 million funding to WHO, and in May terminated US' relationship with the global health body.

The WHO on 14 January had tweeted that preliminary investigations by the Chinese authorities had found “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission".

The Coronavirus has so far infected around 1.11 crore people around the globe, while more than 5.25 lakh people have died due to the deadly virus.