WHO agrees to ‘impartial, independent’ review of COVID-19 response

FORUM Staff

The World Health Organization (WHO) will launch an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation” of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A resolution calling for a wholesale review of the agency’s handling of the global crisis was submitted by European Union member states and adopted by WHO’s 194 member nations during the organization’s 73rd World Health Assembly, held May 18-19, 2020.

The review should “make recommendations to improve global pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacity,” the resolution stated.

“I will initiate such an evaluation at the earliest appropriate moment,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the closing session of the annual assembly, which because of the novel coronavirus was held by videoconference rather than in its regular host city of Geneva, Switzerland. (Pictured: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, attends the virtual 73rd World Health Assembly.)

“We welcome any initiative to strengthen global health security and to strengthen WHO,” he said, noting the resolution called for a review of the broader international response and wasn’t limited to WHO’s actions.

As Ghebreyesus gave his closing remarks, his agency’s COVID-19 online dashboard displayed a grim toll: 4.7 million confirmed cases globally, with more than 315,000 deaths.

Since emerging in late 2019 and becoming a public health disaster, the spread of the disease has been shadowed by questions of culpability and complaints of inadequate response measures. The rancor persisted during the assembly.

In a four-page letter to Ghebreyesus dated May 18, U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration’s review of WHO’s “failed response to the COVID-19 outbreak” highlighted the health organization’s “alarming lack of independence from the People’s Republic of China.”

WHO “consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan [China] in early December 2019, or even earlier,” the letter stated.

A WHO expert has said wholesale wildlife markets in Wuhan “must have played a role somehow, either as the source of the outbreak or an amplifying setting.” However, the WHO resolution does not address the genesis of COVID-19 or the actions of specific member nations. The United States did not oppose consensus adoption of the resolution’s call for a COVID-19 review.

President Trump suspended U.S. funding for WHO in April 2020 pending his administration’s investigation. His letter warned he would be forced to make the funding freeze permanent and reconsider U.S. membership in WHO if the organization “does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days.”

A timeline for the WHO review wasn’t immediately clear. It will be up to individual member states to enact any recommendations issued.

After consistently rejecting calls by the U.S., Australia and other nations for an independent review, including by threatening trade boycotts against Australia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) acquiesced as the assembly opened.

“China supports the idea of a comprehensive review of the global response,” General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping said in a videoconference address to WHO delegates. He pledged U.S. $2 billion over two years to COVID-19 response and recovery efforts, particularly in developing nations.

Xi also defended the PRC’s virus response. “We have provided information to the WHO and the relevant countries in the most-timely fashion,” he said.

Xi’s contention did not sway U.S. officials.

“We saw that WHO failed at its core mission of information sharing and transparency when member states do not act in good faith,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said in his opening-day video address to the assembly, alluding to accusations the PRC concealed details of the initial outbreak with deadly consequences. “This cannot ever happen again.”

He noted the U.S. has allocated more than U.S. $9 billion to the global pandemic response and launched the world’s first human vaccine trial.

“These successes and the transparent way in which we share them will benefit the whole world,” Azar said.