As Coronavirus cases surpass 6,00,000 mark globally, here’s how WHO deceived the world by aiding Chinese Propaganda

28th March: As the Coronavirus positive cases crossed 6,00,000 mark today globally with around 28,000 death, the aiding of Chinese propaganda on the COVID-19 outbreak by the World Health Organization (WHO) is being heavily criticized by the world leaders and media.

While PM Modi at G20 Summit diplomatically questioned the WHO and called for measures to strengthen and reform WHO, other leaders such as Trump have openly accused WHO of favouring China on the Coronavirus outbreak.

China’s substantial contribution to the WHO, standing at USD 86 million as of last year, may explain WHO’s tilt towards China but it can never be justified.

The World Health Organization was first informed about the novel coronavirus on the new year eve, allegedly after more than a month of initial outbreak in China’s Wuhan.

By January 8, the total number of Corona cases had reached around 100 and had even crossed the borders as South Korea registered the first possible case of virus on Jan 8, still it was not enough for WHO to recommend any specific health measurers for travellers to and from Wuhan.

Instead it undermined the importance of screening by publishing the following statement in an article on its website.

It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources.

Moreover, when countries like US and India were banning travel to and from Wuhan, a WHO statement said “Widespread travel bans not needed to beat China virus” in first week of february 2020, again undermining the significance of an important measure that could have been proven vital in combating the virus.

It’s failure in locating the zero patient is also being questioned since it has led to a constant brat between US and China over where the disease originated.

The role and relation of WHO’s Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who served as Ethopia’s Minister of Health, is also under scrutiny for personally favouring China, allegedly because China is a prime investor in Ethiopia under the One Road One Belt scheme.

On 28th January, the WHO chief flew in to China to meet President Xi Jinping and praised the country’s leadership for its “determination to end the new coronavirus outbreak”. He also ironically praised the Chinese authorities, accused of manipulating facts and figures during the course of the outbreak for “Transparency”.

https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1222259655902212097

Another blunder by the International public health agency that backfired was to cite the Chinese Authorities saying that they have not found any clear evidence of human-to-human transmission within the country yet.

China’s bitter rival Taiwan recently claimed that they had warned China about the Human-to-human transmission on December 31st, however the WHO did not publish the information on their website.

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

WHO added another controversy to the long list of controversies surrounding its handling of COVID-19 when it broke the convention to name a disease after the place where it originated like in case of Ebola virus (Coming from Ebola river in West Africa) and Zika virus (Coming from Zika Forest in Uganda), instead WHO named the disease as COVID-19.

Lastly, probably the biggest blunder of all made by WHO was to delay declaring the disease as pandemic. The demands to declare the disease as pandemic were made since mid february, but it took WHO as long as 11th of March to declare it a pandemic, when a good amount of damage was done and an even more substantial damage was on its way.

Early declaration of the disease as pandemic would have alerted the world and stricter measures and restrictions would have been employed to curb the disease.