Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, discussing the coronavirus in late January.
Photo: denis balibouse/ReutersMore than 100 countries, led by the European Union and Australia, have backed a resolution to independently review the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and the question of whether the World Health Organization acted to the best of its limited powers to contain the disease.
It isn’t clear if the resolution, to be considered at a WHO summit likely on Tuesday, will be blocked by the Trump administration, which has pushed for an inquiry much more squarely targeted at China. Nor is it clear if Beijing will accept the resolution since China has opposed any inquiry that could blame the country for its failure to stop the virus when it first emerged in the central Hubei province.
Instead, the inquiry shows the large number of countries trying to find a middle course between the two geopolitical rivals, with many governments in agreement that the WHO lacked the powers to challenge early reassurances from China, and was reluctant to publicly criticize one of its most powerful members. The WHO is holding its annual World Health Assembly over videoconference this week, with 194 member states set to discuss the pandemic. Opposition from either the U.S. or China would be enough to kill the resolution.
Tracking the Pandemic’s Toll
Under the international health treaties that govern the WHO, the U.N. agency relies on national governments to detect and report emerging epidemics. The U.N. agency has limited inspection powers, though Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pushed for the agency, or some similar organization, to have more authority to forcibly conduct on-the-ground research when such diseases appear.
The resolution would represent an attempt to ascertain whether the WHO’s current reliance on national governments is sufficient in an age of globalized trade and travel. The WHO didn’t confirm the disease spread between humans until Jan. 22, three weeks after detecting the outbreak, in large part because China’s health ministry didn’t confirm such spread until Jan. 20.
For more than a month, European governments have been working on a resolution that would study the response to the pandemic’s spread. Previous versions of the resolution delicately avoided any focus on the role of China—the EU’s second-largest trading partner—and were opposed by the U.S. This weekend, European officials said they were cautiously optimistic that the latest version wouldn’t be blocked by China or the U.S., although discussions were ongoing.
A WHO representative said Sunday, “This is a matter for member states to discuss at the World Health Assembly.”
The WHO relies on national governments to detect and report emerging epidemics.
Photo: fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesThe European Union had come under pressure from Washington to ensure any review focused on China’s handling of the origins of the virus and steered clear of a wider review of how other countries, such as the U.S., handled the pandemic. Washington has also been fiercely critical of the WHO’s work with Beijing in the early stages of the crisis. U.S. State Department officials have publicly demanded that U.S. allies “ask the hard questions that are needed of China, as well as the WHO” to prevent a similar pandemic in the future.
China has long been clear that it won’t accept an international probe it fears will single the country out. China had no immediate comment.
The latest version of the resolution seeks to strike a balance between the two sets of concerns, by shifting the focus to the WHO.
It flicks at U.S. concerns by focusing attention on the WHO’s role in leading the international response, including a review of the actions of the WHO and the organization’s timelines of the spread of the pandemic as the first cases emerged in China toward the end of last year.
However the resolution doesn’t refer to China or Wuhan at all and the review won’t delve explicitly into the pandemic’s origins, as Washington had sought.
The Europeans had insisted that any review shouldn’t come while countries were still dealing with the brunt of the pandemic, hoping to avoid sharpening international tensions over the crisis. The current resolution says the inquiry should happen at the earliest possible opportunity, in consultation with member states.
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The World Health Assembly, the WHO’s general assembly, determines its policies and is the forum for members to call for it to take action in a specific area. Decisions are generally taken by consensus.
In mid-April, Australia made its own call for a global inquiry, focused in particular on Chinese transparency about the pandemic’s spread. Beijing responded by threatening to reduce trade ties between the countries.
Beijing has responded to U.S. calls for a review into the origins of the crisis by casting its own doubts on the virus’s Chinese origin, suggesting without evidence that the U.S. military introduced it to China.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com
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