WHO chief: ‘The world should have listened then, carefully’

The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has supported its treatment of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Countries should have listened to the agency after it declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on 30 January, when there were 82 cases outside China and no deaths", said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.  He also said that, “The world should have listened to WHO then, carefully.”

“We urged the whole world to implement a general public health approach, and we said: ‘Find, test, isolate, and do contact tracing’. You can check for yourselves: countries who followed that are in a better position than others.”

US President Donald Trump ordered the end of US funding to the agency after blaming it of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”.