The daily press briefing on coronavirus COVID-19, direct from WHO Headquarters, Geneva Switzerland with Dr Tedros WHO Director-General, Dr Micheal Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme, and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, Health Emergencies Programme.
WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said the “United States of America has been a longstanding and generous friend” to the Organization and hoped it would “continue to be so” as he expressed regret for the decision by the US President to order a hold in funding to the World Health Organization.
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva today (15 Apr), Tedros said, in due course, WHO’s performance in tackling this pandemic “will be reviewed by WHO’s Member States and the independent bodies that are in place to ensure transparency and accountability, for that matter, involving all responders.” He said this was part of the “usual process” put in place by WHO Member States. The WHO chief said, “No doubt, areas for improvement will be identified and there will be lessons for all of us to learn.”
Tedros told reports that the Organization was reviewing the impact of any withdrawal of US funding on its work, adding that WHO would work with its partners” to fill any financial gaps we face and to ensure our work continues uninterrupted.”
Micheal Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme at WHO, said the Organization “alerted the world” on the 5th of January. He said, “Systems around the world, including the US began to activate their incident manager systems. On January 6th, and through the next number of weeks, we’ve produced multiple updates to countries, including briefing multiple governments, multiple scientists around the world on the developing situation, and that is what it was, a developing situation.”
Ryan stressed that in the middle of an influenza season, sometimes it’s very difficult to pick out a signal of a cluster of cases of a virus. He added, “In fact, it’s quite remarkable that such a cluster was picked out. 41 confirmed cases ultimately in a cluster in Wuhan.”
Tedros also told reporters that yesterday the first United Nations Solidarity Flight took off, transporting personal protective equipment, ventilators and lab supplies to many countries across Africa. He said, “The Solidarity Flight is part of a massive effort to ship lifesaving medical supplies to 95 countries across the globe.”