WHO Issues Rare Rebuke to China for Delaying Virus Team
By: MSN
This certainly is something I'll bet not many people knew/know about. 10 months to "negotiate" research/studies on the Chinavirus by WHO? And still no resolve? What are they hiding/afraid of?
That was rhetorical by the way.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WHO Issues Rare Rebuke to China for Delaying Virus Team
(Bloomberg) --
© Bloomberg Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
The World Health Organization expressed disappointment with China for delaying the travel of experts to the Asian country to investigate the origin of the virus, in a rare instance of public criticism from the international organization.
Chinese officials have not yet finalized permission to allow WHO-appointed experts to enter the country even as some of them embarked on travel, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a briefing on Tuesday. The delay comes despite months of negotiation and planning between Chinese officials and the 10-member expert team.
"I am very disappointed with this news given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute," Tedros said. "We are eager to get the mission underway as soon as possible."
The delay by Chinese authorities fuels concern that Beijing is obstructing international efforts to trace the origins of a pandemic that has now killed over 1.8 million people worldwide. Stung by criticism that China initially covered up the extent of the crisis, state media and government figures have been pushing the possibility that the pathogen did not emerge solely in the Asian country.
China Making It Harder to Solve the Mystery of Where Covid Began
China is still working with the WHO on dates and other details regarding the mission, with hopes that a decision for arrangements will be reached as soon as possible, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a briefing on Wednesday.
"There might be some misunderstanding in this. But there's no need to read too much into it," she said.
Members of the WHO expert team appear to have called off their travel for now. "No, luckily wasn't on the way yet," Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said in a Twitter post, in response to a question on whether she was facing travel obstacles.
The WHO has been criticized for being too deferential to China through the course of the pandemic, and has been blamed by other countries for initially downplaying the severity of the crisis. U.S. President Donald Trump said last year that the superpower would terminate its relationship with the WHO unless it "demonstrated independence" from China.
Top Chinese epidemiologist Liang Wannian, who oversaw the country's virus response until September last year, told Bloomberg News in an interview on Tuesday that the WHO's investigation would "begin very soon" in China.
The WHO team and experts from China plan to jointly analyze data and samples taken from the Wuhan wet market where many of China's earliest Covid-19 patients appear to have become infected, he said.
Liang said he has been working with two WHO experts since July to formulate a plan on how to conduct the tracing work in China.
(Updated with China foreign ministry response in the fifth paragraph)
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Quite telling...........
Trump and his supporters are off topic
I saw that and it troubled me - I had felt that it was a good move on the part of the Chinese government to finally allow an international inspection, and now this unexplainable delay is very disappointing.
Be very careful what you say Buzz....they can read your every keystroke....and they know where you live
LOL. I'm not worried. Millions of Chinese people posted on social news sites dismay about the silencing of the Wuhan whistleblower and you have seen my comments on NT many times voicing my dismay as well, and nothing has happened to me for doing so.
So... does anyone really think that they'll even find traces in that market at this point? We're talking about more than a year ago that the first people got sick in Wuhan. The tracing should have been performed a year ago.
And then there is this...........
Makes one wonder if they really have it under control as we are being told.........or just how much info coming out of China is accurate. May be another reason for the delay in letting in the committee.
Whether or not America agrees with it, or would even try to emulate it, it takes draconian measures to contain the virus. China is dealing with it in the only way that can be successful. It tests EVERYONE, and traces contacts, and the people gladly cooperate. What is happening in America these days is simply a result of a number of factors, the main one being refusal to universally comply with guidelines. China reports new cases every day, both imported cases and locally transmitted ones. They have been successful in containing it where I live and I know because I have doctor friends here who do not lie to me.
I agree that some news that comes out of China is politically cleansed, but not all of it, or my own eyes have been lying to my brain.