World Health Organization's response to the COVID-19 pandemic


The World Health Organization is a leading organization involved in the global coordination for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. On 5 January 2020, WHO notified the world about "pneumonia of unknown cause" in China and subsequently followed up with investigating the disease. On 20 January, WHO confirmed human-to-human transmission of the disease. On 30 January, WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and warned all countries to prepare. On 11 March, WHO said that the outbreak constituted a pandemic. WHO has spearheaded several initiatives like COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for fundraising for the pandemic and Solidarity Trial for investigating potential treatment options for the disease. In responding to the outbreak, WHO has had to deal with political conflicts between member states, in particular between the United States and China.

Timeline

December 2019

WHO releases daily situation reports and holds press conferences for updating the media about the pandemic. WHO has shipped more than two million items of personal protective equipment and one million diagnostic test kits to over 120 countries. WHO has launched multilingual e-learning courses about various aspects of COVID-19, including for preparedness and response. By April 2020, WHO's Solidarity Response Fund had gathered more than US$140 million from more than 200,000 individuals and organizations.
Safe Hands Challenge, a campaign launched by WHO urges everyone to wash their hands regularly saw participation from celebrities. WHO has active presence on all social media channels, where they work to counter misinformation. In order to counter myths related to COVID-19, WHO has created resources for the public.
WHO has partnered with Lady Gaga, who will perform a TV concert for fundraising for health workers. By 7 April, she raised US$35 million for the cause.

People

, WHO's Director-General, has been leading the organization's efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Along with Tedros, Michael J. Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme and Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of COVID-19 Response, appear in press conferences at WHO Headquarters in Geneva.
The WHO–China Joint Mission in February 2020 was headed by Bruce Aylward of WHO and Wannian Liang of China's National Health Commission.

Reception

WHO's handling of the epidemic has come under criticism amidst what has been described as the agency's "diplomatic balancing act" between "China and China's critics", as ongoing tension between China and the United States creates challenges in controlling the virus. Critics charge the organization with being "too close to Beijing". Initial concerns included the observation that while WHO relies upon data provided and filtered by member states, China has had a "historical aversion to transparency and sensitivity to international criticism".
In response to the criticisms, Director-General Tedros has stated that China "doesn't need to be asked to be praised. China has done many good things to slow down the virus. The whole world can judge. There is no spinning here," and further stating that "I know there is a lot of pressure on WHO when we appreciate what China is doing but because of pressure we should not fail to tell the truth, we don't say anything to appease anyone. It's because it's the truth." Some observers have said WHO is unable to risk antagonizing the Chinese government, as otherwise the agency would not have been able to stay informed on the domestic state of the outbreak and influence response measures there, after which there would have "likely have been a raft of articles criticizing WHO for needlessly offending China at a time of crisis and hamstringing its own ability to operate." Through this, experts such as Dr. David Nabarro have defended this strategy in order "to ensure Beijing's co-operation in mounting an effective global response to the outbreak". Osman Dar, director of the One Health Project at the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security defended WHO's conduct, stating that the same pressure was one "that UN organisations have always had from the advanced economies."
African leaders expressed support for WHO amid the pandemic, with the African Union saying the organization had done "good work" and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari calling for "global solidarity".
The Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Japan, Tarō Asō, said that some people have called WHO the "China Health Organization", because of what he described as its close ties to Beijing.
On 14 April 2020, United States President Donald Trump announced that the United States would halt funding to WHO while reviewing its role in "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus." A week earlier, at a press briefing, Trump had criticized WHO for "missing the call" on the coronavirus pandemic and had threatened to withhold U.S. funding to the organization; on the same day, he also tweeted a complaint that China benefits disproportionately from WHO, saying that "WHO really blew it." The U.S. Congress had already allocated about $122 million to WHO for 2020, and Trump had previously proposed in the White House's 2021 budget request to reduce WHO funding to $58 million. The announcement by President Trump drew widespread condemnation from world leaders and health experts, and came amid constant criticism of his failure to prepare for the outbreak in the United States, the country with the highest official number of confirmed cases of infection as of April 15, 2020. WHO called the decision "regrettable" and stated that the organization first alerted the world on 5 January when a cluster of 41 cases of atypical pneumonia was singled out from the millions of similar cases that occur every year. American law professor Lawrence O. Gostin said that Trump's decision was "the prime example of why we are in this mess": the World Health Organization is hesitant to cause any offense for fear of losing funding.
In April 2020, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that while the Australian government valued the World Health Organization and planned to continue contributing funds, they had "lost faith" in the organization's global headquarters. The Australian government planned to push for WHO to be given greater power, similar to UN weapons inspectors, to reduce reliance on individual country's governments. The Australian government also planned to push for a review of the global handling of the outbreak, including WHO.
In May 2020, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that China's paramount leader Xi Jinping had asked WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a 21 January phone call, to hold off on issuing a global warning or reporting human-to-human transmission. WHO denied that Ghebreyesus and Xi had spoken on that date and added that the two had never spoken by phone. WHO also noted that China had already confirmed human-to-human transmission on 20 January.
On 19 May 2020, Donald Trump re-affirmed his criticism concerning WHO's management of COVID-19 in a letter to Director-General Tedros Adhanom. The letter presented a selective history of the pandemic, ignored WHO's clear warnings, and falsely claimed that WHO ignored warnings from Taiwan that the virus could be transmitted between humans. The Lancet rebutted the claim that WHO had ignored a December 2019 report by the journal, stating its first reports were published on 24 January. Trump threatened to withdraw the United States from WHO if the organization did not "commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days." After 11 days, on May 29, Trump announced plans to cut ties between the United States and WHO, though it was unclear whether he had the authority to do so.
An Associated Press report said that some WHO officials had internal discussions of an alleged delay by the Chinese government regarding the release of data at an early stage of the pandemic.
The WHO has been criticized for not stating that the COVID-19 outbreak was a pandemic until significantly after it had already clearly became one.

Taiwan

The Taiwanese government protested WHO's "very high" risk rating for Taiwan in February 2020, at which time Taiwan had a very small number of cases compared to China. Taiwanese officials and some analysts have said that the exclusion of Taiwan from WHO, on the basis of pressure from China, has increased the risk of Taiwan missing disease-related updates. WHO has responded that Taiwan has been given access to all coronavirus data and information, and said that Taiwanese experts were "involved in all of our consultations... so they're fully engaged and fully aware of all of the developments in the expert networks." China had previously allowed Taiwan to be an observer at the World Health Assembly, before relations deteriorated in 2016. The Taiwanese government and US President Donald Trump have said that Taiwan sent an email to WHO on 31 December warning of human-to-human transmission, a claim that The Guardian and fact-checking websites have rated as false.