WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus denied that his organization sided with China at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling that characterization “an outright lie” pushed by bad-faith actors.
National Review asked Tedros, who was speaking today at a U.N. press conference, whether he regrets how the organization handled the start of the pandemic, given the widespread perception in the U.S. and other countries that he had initially hewed to Beijing’s line. He delivered a lengthy, full-throated defense of the WHO’s handling of its relationship with China, saying that the organization “at one point or the other” has had issues with many countries, including China, and that “it means maybe we’re doing the right thing.”
But the allegation that we’re close to China or something is an outright lie, actually. People who try to build narratives, they said that. But from what happened, start from there, and until now, if you see all the relationships we had with countries, and some of the misunderstandings with countries—sometimes with this country, the other opposite allegation with the other—it’s because we focus on science.
He later added that recent WHO guidance on abortion was controversial with many countries and that even different parties within countries have different views on that topic, saying it shows how the organization sticks to science and evidence.
Tedros’s handling of the WHO relationship with Beijing was widely criticized in the U.S., where his handling of the pandemic led President Trump to begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the global health body.
Early in the pandemic, the Chinese authorities had cracked down on attempts by medical personnel who sought to tell the world about the virus, with law enforcement telling one doctor, Li Wenliang, to stop spreading the word about it. Li later died from the virus.
On January 12, 2020, Tedros gave credence to Chinese-government assessments that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the disease.
Tedros traveled to Beijing in late January 2020 for a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other officials. “We appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak, especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated, including sharing data and genetic sequence of the virus,” he said after the meeting.
Answering NR’s question today, Tedros justified his actions at the time, explaining that China was responsive to WHO’s initial requests:
If you remember at the initial stage, you remember about the sequence, they provided the sequence immediately, and we appreciated that they shared the sequence of the virus Sars-CoV-2 immediately. And then there were other things like especially the measures they were taking on Wuhan to slow the speed of the spread to the rest of the world. And we identified that and we encouraged them to do that, because slowing the spread is very important.
Behind closed doors, WHO officials reportedly struck a different tone in early 2020. They were frustrated that the Chinese government had delayed the release of the virus’s genome, leading the organization to praise Beijing publicly in a bid to convince it to release more information, the Associated Press reported in June 2020.
In 2021, Tedros started to express views more critical of Beijing, demanding access to China for WHO-appointed investigators, with a team eventually traveling to China. In 2021, he also said for the first time that the theory that the Covid outbreak began in a Wuhan lab accident requires further investigation.
Although that push on Covid’s origins has put him at odds with Chinese officials, Tedros still took part in the torch relay for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in the Chinese capital, as many other leaders boycotted the event over the Chinese government’s human-rights atrocities.
In recent days, the WHO chief has doubled down on his requests that China cooperate with the organization’s investigative efforts on Covid’s origins, telling the Financial Times this week that Beijing should grant “full access” for a probe into the origins question. He told the paper that he’s willing to send a WHO team to China.
But today, a reporter from a Chinese propaganda outlet pressed Tedros on his FT interview and called discussion of the origins issue “highly political.” In response, Tedros said that sending a team might not be necessary.
“What we’re asking for is full access, whether by sending a team or remote, full access to information that China has, and we’ll try to understand what happened,” said Tedros, adding that this can be done in collaboration with China and other countries.
He also said that the origins question “could have been less politicized if there was transparency and full access” in the first place.