WHO explains how US was informed of COVID-19 progress

The World Health Organization confirmed on Monday that it has been working very closely with United States COVID-19 experts since the beginning of the outbreak, a rebuke to US President Donald Trump's claim that the WHO did not inform the US of the threat in a timely fashion.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the comment when asked about a Washington Post report on Sunday that US citizens working at WHO transmitted real-time information about the novel coronavirus to the Trump administration.

More than a dozen US researchers, physicians, and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, were working full-time at the Geneva headquarters of the WHO as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, the Post reported, quoting US and international officials.

A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation; something that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials told the Post.

Tedros described the WHO's relationship with the CDC as "long standing" and praised the US institution as a model for the world and for helping the WHO.

"But, at the same time, having CDC staff means that there is nothing hidden from the US from Day One," he said during a virtual news conference from Geneva.

He said the WHO is open, not just to US CDC but all countries and that it wants them to get information in a timely manner.

"There is no secret in WHO because keeping things confidential or secret is dangerous," Tedros said. "It's about lives."

Trump has repeatedly accused the WHO of failing to communicate the extent of the threat posed by COVID-19 and announced last week that he was halting US funding to the global health body.

Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said the WHO has 15 US government representatives embedded with it on COVID-19 since Jan 1, and added that there are two permanent US colleagues on his program, working specially on influenza and epidemic readiness.

"We always have benefited from huge support, particularly from US federal institutions, but also academic institutions and others," he said.

Ryan emphasized that since Jan 1, the WHO has had 15 "details" from the CDC on COVID-19, meaning that 15 CDC staff have been detailed specifically to work with the WHO on COVID-19.

"They have been exceptionally valuable," he said.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of the Health Emergencies Programme and a US epidemiologist, said working with colleagues from CDC and the National Institute of Health in the US and academic partners was "very usual for us".

She expressed that since COVID-19 is very closely related to MERS and SARS, the WHO has almost daily communications with CDC colleagues on MERS to apply the expertise on COVID-19 because of the similarities.

"So, it isn't unusual for us to do that," she said.