Six months after declaring the global emergency, the Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) met for the 4th time on Friday to reassess the COVID-19 pandemic, “whose effects are continuing. will be felt for decades, ”according to the organization’s CEO.
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Composed of about twenty members and advisers, the Committee can propose new recommendations or amend some of them, even if there is little doubt that the international emergency will be maintained, while the pandemic has affected more than 17 million people. people and more than 660,000 deaths.
“This pandemic is a health crisis of as much as one per century, and its effects will be felt for decades to come,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the opening of the meeting.
When the WHO declared the global alert on January 30, there were less than a hundred cases outside China, and no deaths outside this country where the pandemic appeared, he recalled, defending the balance sheet of the institution.
The WHO has been strongly criticized for having delayed declaring this state of emergency, when the coronavirus was first reported in late December in China. The United States, which accused the organization of being a “puppet” in the hands of China, or even of having been “bought” by Beijing, officially began its withdrawal from the institution in July.
The WHO has also been criticized for recommendations deemed late or contradictory, in particular on the wearing of the mask, or the modes of transmission of the virus.
“Our organization reacted immediately, we mobilized all our forces to act and inform,” hammered the technical manager of the pandemic management unit Maria Van Kerkhove, during a press conference Thursday evening.
Dr Michael Ryan, responsible for emergency situations at the WHO, admitted, however, that he was “surprised” by the “slow” response of some countries to health systems deemed to be strong.
“We may have prejudged the effectiveness of these systems,” he said.