China stalled reporting genetic information about COVID-19, angering WHO: report

World Health Organization (WHO) officials reportedly expressed concern about their access to information from Chinese officials about the spread of the coronavirus even while publicly praising China’s government.

An investigation by The Associated Press found that top WHO officials working with China’s government described the amount of information shared by China’s government in January as “minimal” and decried the speed at which officials shared new data.

“We’re currently at the stage where yes, they’re giving it to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV,” Gauden Galea, the WHO’s top official in China, reportedly said during one meeting.

“We have informally and formally been requesting more epidemiological information,” he added. “But when asked for specifics, we could get nothing.”

“We’re going on very minimal information,” added another official, Maria Van Kerkhove.

Michael Ryan, director of the WHO’s health emergencies division, complained to other WHO officials in early January that basic models to predict the virus’s spread were still unavailable due to a lack of data. 

“The fact is, we’re two to three weeks into an event, we don’t have a laboratory diagnosis, we don’t have an age, sex or geographic distribution, we don’t have an [epidemic] curve,” he said.

Those statements come in stark contrast to public statements made by WHO officials throughout January and the spring, which painted a rosier picture of the WHO’s relationship with the Chinese government.

“The Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, said in late January.

“It is very difficult, given the facts,” he added during a news conference in February, “to say that China was hiding.”

The WHO declined to comment to the AP on the specific complaints raised by officials, but defended its efforts to share information with member states.

“Our leadership and staff have worked night and day in compliance with the organization’s rules and regulations to support and share information with all Member States equally, and engage in frank and forthright conversations with governments at all levels,” the WHO said in a statement.

An official with China’s National Health Commission, the country’s highest public health authority, contended that information was shared with the WHO in a “responsible manner” at a press conference last month

“Since the beginning of the outbreak, we have been continuously sharing information on the epidemic with the WHO and the international community in an open, transparent and responsible manner,” Liu Mingzhu said in May, according to the AP.

News of the fraught relationship between WHO officials and China’s government behind the scenes comes days after President Trump announced that the U.S. would end its relationship with the organization, accusing it of being under the “total control” of China’s government.

“We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engaged with them directly, but they have refused to act,” he said at a news conference.

The U.S. contributes about $400 million annually to the global health organization. Trump’s decision was roundly criticized by medical groups including the American Medical Association as well as members of Congress including Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health Committee.

“Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need,” Alexander said. “And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States.”