Archive for ‘vaccine development’

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17/02/2020

Americans on WHO team to assess coronavirus crisis, China says

  • Experts to visit Beijing, Guangdong and Sichuan but no word on whether Hubei is on the itinerary
  • Specialists say visit must include a trip to the outbreak’s epicentre to get a full picture
A nurse cares for a 14-month-old baby infected with the novel coronavirus in an ICU isolation ward of Wuhan Children’s Hospital in Wuhan, at the epicentre of the outbreak. Photo: Xinhua
A nurse cares for a 14-month-old baby infected with the novel coronavirus in an ICU isolation ward of Wuhan Children’s Hospital in Wuhan, at the epicentre of the outbreak. Photo: Xinhua
A team of medical experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), including specialists from the US, will visit Beijing and the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Sichuan from Monday to assess the country’s efforts to contain the spread of a deadly coronavirus, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
But the ministry did not say whether the team would go to Wuhan or any other parts of Hubei, the central Chinese province at the epicentre of the outbreak, raising concerns among medical experts about the transparency of the mission.
The death toll from the coronavirus had risen to 1,770 on mainland China as of Sunday, infecting 70,548 people, including more than 1,700 medical workers. Most of those confirmed with the disease, now known as Covid-19, are in Wuhan.
China has repeatedly said it welcomes international cooperation to contain the outbreak, but the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that it had not yet received an invitation to send experts to the country.
On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the WHO delegation would include Americans, but gave no further details.
The announcement came as a commentary in Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily accused Washington of dragging its feet on a funding pledge to help with the epidemic, saying it had a “dark mentality and taken dangerous action” during the outbreak.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that the mission to China included 12 international medical specialists, and they would, with 12 Chinese experts, learn more about the transmission of the virus and the effectiveness of the measures in a bid to work out the next containment steps for China and the world.

An advance team of WHO medical experts arrived in Beijing last Monday, led by Canadian emergency expert Bruce Aylward, Tedros said.

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said all of the delegation’s members arrived in Beijing over the weekend, and held talks with Chinese medical experts, public health officials and other government departments.

They exchanged views on virus containment, wildlife management and vaccine development, the NHC said.

Experts said the international team would be left with an “incomplete picture” of the outbreak if it did not go to Wuhan or Hubei.

“Unfortunately, this feeds into a narrative that China is trying to hide the true nature of the outbreak, so it would seem to be shortsighted and counterproductive to China’s efforts to say to the world that it is doing everything it can to contain this outbreak,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, a specialist in global health security and international relations at the University of Sydney.

“We have seen in the past when we have external teams, they are often able to identify areas for improvement or to make recommendations for measures that national authorities may not have thought of – we’ve seen that through other examples where external expertise can be valuable in times of crisis.”

He said any impression of a cover-up would likely further strengthen the resolve of countries that had taken strict measures, including travel bans, to keep them in place or tighten them further.

“China has got a public relations campaign that it also needs to be mindful of in engaging with the international community, so there are the actual measures that the government needs to take in order to control the outbreak, but the government also needs to be seen to be doing everything that it can,” he said.

Source: SCMP

Posted in Americans, assess, Beijing, China, Chinese foreign ministry, Communist Party mouthpiece, coronavirus crisis, COVID-19, dragging its feet, epicentre, epidemic, experts, funding pledge, Guangdong, hubei province, ICU isolation ward, international medical specialists, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Health Commission (NHC), outbreak, outbreak’s epicentre, People’s Daily, public relations campaign, sichuan province, Specialists, Uncategorized, vaccine development, visit, Washington, WHO team, wildlife management, World Health Organisation (WHO), Wuhan Children’s Hospital | Leave a Comment »

23/01/2020

WHO expert panel to decide whether new virus is an emergency

GENEVA (Reuters) – A World Health Organisation panel of experts on the new coronavirus met on Thursday to evaluate whether the outbreak, which has spread from China to several countries, constitutes an international emergency.

The 16 independent experts in disease control, virology, epidemiology and vaccine development were holding a second closed-door meeting at the U.N. agency’s headquarters in Geneva after not reaching a decision on Wednesday.

Didier Houssin, an adviser to France’s national health security agency, is serving as chair. Chinese health authorities made a presentation by teleconference and have allowed a WHO team into the country who are due to report back to the panel.

A news conference was expected later in the day.

Here are some facts about WHO Emergency Committees:

– Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Monday that the WHO had called an Emergency Committee to assess the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year.

– Declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern – known as a “PHEIC” in WHO jargon – is rare.

– The WHO panel’s recommendations, after assessing any evidence of human-to-human transmission and other factors, would be put to Tedros, who would decide whether to declare an emergency.

– Only five emergencies have been declared in the past decade: the H1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic (2009), West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, polio (2014), Zika virus (2016), and the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2019).

– The WHO’s criteria, laid out in the 2005 International Health Regulations, define a PHEIC as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other states through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response”.

– Such situations are “serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected”, carry cross-border implications and may require immediate international action, its rules say.

– A declaration would lead to boosting public health measures, funding and resources to prevent and reduce international spread.

– It could include recommendations on trade and travel, including airport screening of passengers, although the WHO generally aims to avoid disruptive trade restrictions.

Source: Reuters

Posted in “PHEIC”, China, Chinese health authorities, coronavirus, decide, disease control, emergency, Emergency Committees, epidemiology, expert panel, experts, Geneva, independent, influenza pandemic, international emergency, International Health Regulations, national health security agency, new virus, polio, Public Health Emergency of International Concern, Uncategorized, vaccine development, virology, West Africa’s Ebola, whether, WHO, World Health Organisation, Wuhan, Zika virus | Leave a Comment »

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