World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defended the timing of when his agency raised alarms about the coronavirus.
Speaking at a media event in Geneva on Wednesday, Tedros noted that on Jan. 30, the WHO declared that the novel coronavirus outbreak constituted a public health emergency when there were only dozens of known cases outside of mainland China, where the virus is believed to have originated.
“Looking back, I think we declared the emergency at the right time and when the world had enough time to respond,” Tedros said. “There were only 82 cases and no deaths. That was enough time. … This was more than two months and 21 days ago, close to three months now.”
The WHO did not declare the outbreak to be a pandemic until March 11, and the group has been criticized for how it has dealt with the health crisis.
President Trump, whose own response to the outbreak has been subject to intense scrutiny, announced earlier this month that the United States would pause payments to the WHO while the administration looks into how the organization handled the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, defended the delay during the press briefing. “The characterization of the disease as a pandemic in itself has no basis other than a description of the event at that time in regards to how many countries are affected,” he said.
Worldwide, there have been more than 2.6 million infections and at least 181,200 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
