World Health Organization Struggles To Maintain Coherent Response As The Pandemic Continues

Just The News: As pandemic continues, World Health Organization struggles to maintain coherent response

The agency has whipsawed back and forth on several critical matters.

Since December, the World Health Organization has flip-flopped and fumbled its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, at times reversing course on major health issues that has led to confusion among world leaders on just how to handle the pandemic.

Among the earliest failures of the WHO—one which only became apparent last week—was the organization's omission of how it initially learned of the disease outbreak.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on April 20 that "the first report [of the disease] came from Wuhan, from China itself," suggesting that the Chinese Communist Party informed the organization of the pandemic in the first days of the outbreak.

Yet, an updated timeline published last week states instead that WHO's Country Office in China first learned of the disease from "a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission" on Dec. 31. The lack of clarity led multiple media outlets to report that Chinese authorities told the WHO’s China office about the outbreak.

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WNU Editor: As a former employee of a UN agency I can easily say with confidence that this is a problem of leadership, starting with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus politicizing the agency's response because of his ties and allegiances to China. It still boggles my mind that the agency only called this epidemic a pandemic in March. Condemned governments who imposed travel restrictions and closed their borders in February. And said that facemasks did not work until only recently.