According to the newspaper’s sources, the agreements between the WHO and the Chinese authorities concerned the fact that the experts of the organization, who came to China in January and February of this year during the investigation of the origin of the new coronavirus, will study exclusively the version of its natural origin, without considering the theory of laboratory leakage. …
According to The Sunday Times, this agreement is yet another example of WHO’s pro-Chinese orientation.
Beijing has been purposefully building up its influence in WHO since the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS, also known as SARS) in China.
According to the newspaper, this was due to the fact that the Chinese authorities were very unhappy with the harsh criticism addressed to them for the slowness of actions in the fight against the epidemic and the unwillingness to provide the necessary information to the international scientific community, which was openly spoken by the Norwegian director of WHO at that time, Gro Harlem Bruntland.
The publication recalled that then the WHO leadership issued a recommendation to refuse travel to those areas of the country where the disease was detected, as a result of which, according to a number of experts, the Chinese economy lost about $ 6 billion.
Against this backdrop, Beijing has led the efforts of a group of states to carry out internal WHO reform aimed at limiting the powers of the organization’s director general, including in the issue of recommendations for visits to a particular country.
Similar messages in the WHO called “information stuffing”.
“The top priority for WHO is to end the most acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are helping countries develop a complete, data-driven response to the challenges they face,” the organization said.
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