EU to propose process for how WHO can

learn from Covid-19 outbreak

The European Union is to put forward proposals for a mechanism to learn from
the coronavirus pandemic at the next meeting of the World Health
Organization (WHO) but will stop short of calls from the US and Australia for a
full international inquiry.

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Brussels is trying to steer a course between the US and China in the blame game
between the superpowers. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has blamed
China for tens of thousands of deaths and demanded the WHO hold an inquiry
into what it was told by the country about the outbreak. At issue in any inquiry
would be timing and whether it would focus on what happened in China, China’s
communications with the WHO or the WHO’s own response.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said the bloc’s proposal, to be put
forward at a virtual meeting of the WHO on 18 May, would “provide access to
how to learn more about the origin of this disease to prevent the next pandemic.
Because it wasn’t going to be the last. Lessons will have to be learned from it.”

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There is support within Europe, including from the UK, for an examination of the
WHO’s role. The US has reduced its leverage in calling for a full inquiry, however,
by suspending its payments to the WHO in a move widely seen as
counterproductive.
Borrel said he had not seen evidence to support the sometimes contradictory US
claims that the virus was deliberately or accidentally leaked from a state-run
laboratory in Wuhan.

“I think that when the US president makes such strong allegations against
someone, he has information that I don’t have,” he said in an interview with the
European Council on Foreign Relations, a thinktank.

“I do not think it is the time for blame games or mutual reproach,” Borrel added.
“This is the rhetoric we are somewhat hearing in the United States, calling the
virus ‘Chinese’, or the ‘Wuhan virus’. I don’t think it is the moment to reproach
anybody but instead to join forces against a problem that is everyone’s. If we
don’t solve it everywhere, we won’t solve it anywhere.

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“We won’t get out of this crisis without very strong coordinated action
between China, the United States, and Europe.”

Borrell said he did not believe that disinformation in the form of “dangerous
information that is putting lives at risk” had come from the Chinese government
but said that Europe should no longer be reliant on China for medical supplies,
and suggested Africa could produce more for the EU. “It is not normal for Europe
not to produce a single gram of paracetamol, and for 80% of antibiotic
production to be concentrated in China,” he said.
There are likely to be disputes over the independence and terms of reference for
any inquiry. The WHO commissioned both internal and external inquiries into
the Ebola outbreak in west Africa 2014.

It also set up in August 2015 a committee to review nation state compliance with
the WHO’s international health regulations, the means by which nation states are
obliged to keep the WHO informed about health policies and epidemics. Non-
compliance with the regulations is widespread, but there is little evidence that
China did not keep the WHO informed during its coronavirus outbreak.