He assures that his response to the coronavirus saved lives since he received the first notice | Experts reproach several European countries, including Spain, for their initial inaction
Despite the fact that it came out quite well in the text, the World Health Organization (WHO) has responded to the report of the The Lancet Commission on the pandemic pointing out “key omissions & rdquor; and “bad interpretations & rdquor ;. Specifically, the body led by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which appreciates that the commission of experts supports its central role in global health, defends that its response to the coronavirus was “immediate, multi-year and saves lives” since receiving the first alert from China on December 30, 2019.
As reported on Thursday by Faro de Vigo and other Prensa Ibérica newspapers, the report of some thirty experts from various fields, from the commission of the magazine The Lancet, described as “massive global failure & rdquor; the management of the pandemic, which has caused millions of avoidable deaths among the more than 17 million estimated victims. Furthermore, the mistakes left millions of vulnerable people unprotected and reversed progress made on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the UN in many countries.
“The delays of the WHO in declaring a public health emergency of international importance and in recognizing the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 They coincided with a lack of cooperation and coordination from national governments on travel protocols, testing strategies, commodity supply chains, data reporting systems and other international policies vital to fighting the pandemic.” ;, expresses the report of the experts of The Lancet, in which there is only one author linked to Spain, the American epidemiologist Jeffrey V. Lazarus, who works in the ISGlobalthe Hospital Clinic and the University of Barcelona.
Through a statement issued this Thursday, the WHO points out that on December 30, 2019 The WHO received the first alert of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan and asked Chinese health authorities for more information the next day.
The WHO provides a chronology until mid-February of its actions, which included the issuance of a “global alert to all member countries & rdquor; on January 5, 2020. “This alerted member states and advised them to take measures to identify cases, care for patients and prevent infection and person-to-person transmission of acute respiratory pathogens with epidemic and pandemic potential & rdquor ;, says the international health organization.
On January 30, 2020, when 98 cases (and no deaths) had been reported in 18 countries outside of China, the CEO, tedros ahanom, reconvened the Emergency Committee, which reported that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Importance (PHEIC). Tedros took his advice and declared a PHEIC, issuing temporary recommendations on how countries could prepare and respond.
The report of “The Lancet Commission on the lessons for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic”, for its part, does not analyze the individual response of each country, but it does point out that several countries in Western Europe registered a large number of infections early in the pandemic, notably Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. He stresses that they arrived in these countries by plane from China “many infected people” during January and early February 2020. “There were few tests in the first weeks of the outbreak and there was a massive increase in cases in March 2020 & rdquor ;, The Lancet experts recall, who reproach that the governments of these European countries ” They did not aim to suppress the pandemic, but only to stop the transmission of the virus & rdquor ;.
Regarding the routes of infection, the WHO He assures that he “repeatedly warned about the potential for asymptomatic transmission from person to person, particularly presymptomatic transmission, even in late January in a surveillance guide” on January 29.
As for airborne transmission, which the experts from The Lancet they reproach him for having taken more than a year to recognize, the WHO says that it warned him on January 10, 2020, although only for health environments. The WHO alleges in its defense that it is “leading and coordinating a multidisciplinary and inter-institutional international technical consultation process to discuss and reach a consensus on pathogens that are transmitted through the air & rdquor ;.