agency, when I talk to China, when I talk to the U.S., I don’t talk by kicking in the door and telling either capital ‘this is what you should do,’” Steiner told POLITICO.Ī Geneva-based diplomat who participates in WHO weekly briefings with member countries offered a less charitable assessment of Tedros’ “tough talk on China.” He called Tedros’ July 16 announcement of the probe “the surprise of the year” and suggested it partially reflected his career ambitions. Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and chair of United Nations Sustainable Development Group, acknowledged Tedros’ has to do a “very difficult tightrope walk” in engaging with China at a “very volatile time” in its relations with major powers, including the United States and the European Union.īut he said China’s interpretation of the probe as arbitrary foreign diktat didn’t help. officials also fault the tone of the WHO’s communication with China about the follow-up investigation. Are you going to do a search of 15,000 pages of Wuhan Institute of Virology notebooks and look for where someone wrote ’oops!’? “There is a misunderstanding that you will get to the bottom of this by talking to Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists and poring over notebooks. “We are demanding things that the Chinese government will never agree to, banging on the door of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to show the notebooks which they will never agree to,” Hotez said. Hotez places the responsibility for the rejection on the WHO for focusing on the Wuhan lab in the emergence of the virus. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) speaks during a joint hearing before House Judiciary Committee Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee and House Foreign Affairs Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.īut acrimony toward China for its derailment of the proposed follow-up WHO investigation is not universal. Ami Bera (D-CA), chair of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia and Nonproliferation, told POLITICO in a statement that China’s move was “unacceptable.” Bera demanded a “comprehensive, transparent and independent analysis into the origins of COVID-19.” Congressional Research Service report released on July 9 noted that as a result of the pandemic, worldwide “95 million people may have entered into extreme poverty in 2020 with 80 million more undernourished compared to pre-pandemic levels.”Ĭhina’s rejection of the probe to learn the virus origin has drawn criticism on Capitol Hill. The human implications of the pandemic’s economic impact have also been stark. It’s impact has included a sharp reduction in global gross domestic product and drastically curtailed global trade in 2020. The pandemic has also inflicted a catastrophic global economic toll. The United States has recorded more than 610,000 COVID-19 fatalities in the same period. The virus has killed more than 4 million people and sickened 193 million others worldwide. “I think the Chinese now have an official narrative and they are pushing it very hard and there is no opportunity for them to revisit that narrative of having asserted success” of its pandemic control efforts, Beyrer said.Ĭovid-19 has had a dramatic impact on lives and livelihood around the world.
Tutu professor of public health and human rights at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, called China’s rejection of the probe “very problematic.”īeyrer attributed China’s action to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s determination to stifle any potentially negative revelations about the origins of Covid-19. “It makes people suspect this is a manmade virus with an intentional release.”Ĭhris Beyrer, Desmond M. “I think what asked was perfectly reasonable, ” said Osterholm, who argued that China’s rejection of the probe will fuel conspiratorial speculation about how the virus emerged in China. Zeng Yixin, China’s vice minister of the National Health Commission, rejected the plan, saying it “disregards common sense and defies science.”Ĭhina’s response was unjustified, said Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of President Joe Biden’s pre-inauguration coronavirus advisory board. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, speaks during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, (not in picture) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Jin Beijing, China.
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