Headquarters of the World Health Organization: there is a lot of media and the tension is palpable. On Wednesday, an ad hoc scientific committee met urgently. Some experts were in Geneva, others linked to WHO by videoconference. The committee had to make a decision on which the whole planet was hanging. After hours of discussion, the Committee was unable to decide whether it would classify the coronavirus epidemic, which is spreading in China and elsewhere, as a public health emergency of international concern. It was totally shared: “It was 50-50,” notes Professor Didier Houssin, president of the emergency committee. The latter resumes work Thursday morning.
Tricky decision
For the UN institution, such a decision is always delicate, because its consequences are considerable. Trade and travel restrictions may ensue. WHO declared such an emergency in 2018 in the DRC and West Africa in 2014 as part of a serious Ebola epidemic. But also in 2016 for a Zika epidemic and in 2009 for the H1N1 swine flu. She is always torn between the need to take stock of the rapidly changing situation on the ground, the risk of overreacting as she did in 2009 or of delaying taking the necessary measures as was the case with the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia which infected 28,000 people and killed some 11,000 others.
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