A year on, WHO still struggling to manage pandemic response
Associated PressGENEVA — When the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic one year ago Thursday, it did so only after weeks of resisting the term and maintaining that the highly infectious virus could still be stopped. “Everybody has been wondering why WHO was so praising of China back in January” 2020, Burci said, adding that the praise has come back “to haunt WHO big-time.” Some experts say WHO’s blunders came at a high price, and it remains too reliant on iron-clad science instead of taking calculated risks to keep people safer — whether on strategies like mask-wearing or whether COVID-19 is often spread through the air. “Without a doubt, WHO’s failure to endorse masks earlier cost lives,” said Dr. Trish Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care health sciences at Oxford University who sits on several WHO expert committees. Internally, WHO officials described some of their biggest member countries’ approaches to stemming COVID-19 as “an unfortunate laboratory to study the virus” and “macabre.” More recently, Tedros seems to have found a slightly firmer voice — speaking truth to leaders like Germany’s president about the need for wealthy countries to share vaccines or criticizing China for dragging its heels in not quickly granting visas to the WHO-led investigative team. At a press briefing this month, WHO senior adviser Dr. Bruce Aylward said simply: “We can’t tell individual countries what to do.” ___ AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London.