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World Health Organization: We Blew It. Risk Of Coronavirus Risk Actually ‘Very High’

   DailyWire.com
London Chinatown entered the Chinese new year ("year of the rat") in the shadow of coronavirus with pedestrians covering their faces with sanitary masks but celebrations went on in London, England on January 26, 2020.
Ilyas Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted it made an error last week when it classified the global risk of China’s new coronavirus — which can lead to SARS — as “moderate.” The organization on Monday released a new report late Sunday that stated the risk was actually “very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level.”

The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Tuesday that a footnote in the WHO report stated the group had “incorrectly” stated the global risk was merely “moderate.”

“The correction of the global risk assessment does not mean that an international health emergency has been declared,” the outlet reported. “The WHO on Thursday stopped short of declaring the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern – a rare designation used only for the worst outbreaks that would trigger more concerted global action.”

Eighty-one people have died so far — all in China — due to the virus, while at least 2,700 people have been infected worldwide.

Reporters on Thursday questioned WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the decision not to declare an emergency. He said the assessment could always change but that right now the risk was “high” but not “very high.”

“This is an emergency in China but it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one,” he said. “WHO’s risk assessment is that the outbreak is a very high risk in China, and a high risk regionally and globally.”

The organization also said the current coronavirus assessment was “a global evaluation of risk, covering severity, spread and capacity to cope,” and added that three situation reports contained an “error in the wording,” suggesting the risk was merely moderate.

Co-director of the Swiss School of Public Health told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) of the miscalculation: “It’s a mistake. It’s definitely a sizeable one, … but I really think it’s a mistake that has now been corrected.”

More from the AFP:

WHO’s cautious approach to the outbreak, which has been challenged by some critics, can be seen in the context of past criticism over its slow or too hasty use of the term, first used for the deadly 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic.

During that outbreak, the UN health agency was criticised for sparking panic-buying of vaccines with its announcement that year that the outbreak had reached pandemic proportions, and then anger when it turned out the virus was not nearly as dangerous as first thought.

But in 2014, the WHO met harsh criticism for dragging its feet and downplaying the severity of the Ebola epidemic that ravaged three West Africa countries, claiming more than 11,300 lives by the time it ended in 2016.

It should be noted that despite the media attention to the new corona virus, influenza (the flu) has killed far more people than the virus in China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 8,200 people have already died and 140,000 have been hospitalized so far during the 2019-2020 flu season.

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