3 hr 1 min ago
WHO defends its early actions in fighting the coronavirus
From CNN's Amanda Watts
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, speaks during a press briefing on Covid-19 at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 9. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Members of the World Health Organization on Wednesday defended their early actions when it came to fighting the coronavirus.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program said, “when WHO issued its first guidance to countries, it was extremely clear that respiratory precautions should be taken in dealing with patients with this disease, that labs needed to be careful in terms of their precautions and taking samples, because there was a risk that the disease could spread from person to person in those environments.”
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious diseases epidemiologist with WHO, said she recently went back and listened to the WHO news conference on January 14, and at the time, there were 41 confirmed cases worldwide.
“All of our guidance that was before we did that press conference was about limiting exposure to people and to prevent transmission, particularly in health care settings,” adding “our guidance that was put out was about respiratory droplets and contact protection,” Van Kerkove said. Noting, that was out on January 10 and 11.
Ryan said health systems around the world, including the United States, began to activate incident management systems during the first week of January.
“In the initial reports, in which there were no mention of human to human transmission, was a cluster of atypical pneumonia or pneumonia or unknown origin," he said.
“The idea of having a defense, at this point, seems rather strange,” Ryan said.
Ryan went on to say that “there are literally millions and millions of cases of atypical pneumonia around the world, every year,” adding, in the middle of flu season, “sometimes it's very difficult to pick out a signal of a cluster of cases. In fact, it's quite remarkable that such a cluster was picked out — 41 confirmed cases ultimately in a cluster in Wuhan.”
“We will be very happy when the after action reviews come in fact, I am very anxious for those after action reviews to come because we do them for every outbreak response and I'll be delighted with our teams and look forward to that engagement to look and see where we can learn to do better, where we can improve our response," Ryan said.
