China and WHO's initial response to COVID-19 pandemic was slow, says independent panel

An independent review panel has said that China and the World Health Organisation (WHO) could have acted faster to avert the ongoing crisis during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response in its second report said that there were signs early on in the pandemic for WHO to take rapid measures. The report said, "more timely and stronger warnings of the potential for human-to-human transmission could have been issued by both WHO and national and local authorities". The panel said that the preventive measures should have been applied immediately in all countries where the risk of potential spread was likely. The panel further added that further analysis will be undertaken to better understand why the current system to access national preparedness failed to predict actual performance, and what can be done to improve the system. 

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'The Panel is conscious that it is easy to identify shortcomings in the early response to an outbreak with the benefit of hindsight, but far more difficult to exercise good judgment in the context of emerging, scientifically-uncertain, and incomplete information. Nevertheless, the Panel believes there are important lessons to be drawn from what was known about and acted on in response to the emergence of COVID-19 from its earliest stage," the second report said. 

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WHO under scanner since start of pandemic

The World Health Organisation (WHO) received a lot of backlashes earlier last year after it failed to declare the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. It also garnered criticism for not announcing earlier that the disease can be transmitted from human to human. The UN health body was accused of siding with China during the pandemic and helping Beijing to cover up the outbreak for some time after the start of the pandemic. However, WHO denied all the allegations. 

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The pandemic has killed more than 2 million people and has infected over 95 million so far. This is the worst pandemic in more than a hundred years given the sheer number of people it has impacted. WHO has sent a team to China to investigate the true origin of the virus, which China argues may have originated somewhere else. 

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