The World Health Organization announced the formation of a panel that will examine the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the panel will be expected to provide its first interim report by November. The report will examine how the countries reacted to the outbreak, which has ravaged the globe since it first emerged in central China late last year.
“This is a time for self-reflection, to look at the world we live in and to find ways to strengthen our collaboration as we work together to save lives and bring this pandemic under control,” Tedros said. “The magnitude of this pandemic, which has touched virtually everyone in the world, clearly deserves a commensurate evaluation.”
There have been more than 12.1 million reported cases of the coronavirus and at least 550,000 deaths worldwide since the pandemic began. The United States leads the world in the number of infections with more than 3 million cases, followed by Brazil with 1.7 million cases, and India with about 167,000 cases.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf have been selected to lead the newly formed panel. Clark is also the former president of the United Nations Development Program.
The WHO has been roundly criticized by President Trump and his administration for what it considers as ties to China that are a bit too cozy. The president and other lawmakers have repeatedly chided China for its role at the outset of the pandemic and for accusations that the Chinese government downplayed the severity of the health crisis.
The Trump administration notified Congress on Tuesday that the U.S. is withdrawing from the WHO. In a letter to Tedros in May, Trump accused the WHO of “consistently ignoring credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier.”
