WHO says Ebola is not a “pandemic emergency,” and US criticism of response may be “misguided”

Geneva – The World Health Organization on Wednesday said the risk of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s The deadly Ebola outbreak it was currently high at the national and regional levels but low globally.

WHO experts say that although its origin is still being investigated, given the extent of the situation in eastern DRC, it is possible that the disease started a few months ago.

But the UN health agency’s emergency committee said it did not currently meet the pandemic’s emergency threshold.

“The WHO considers the risk of this epidemic to be high at the national and regional level, and low at the global level,” said the head of the organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

So far, 51 cases have been confirmed in the DRC, in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “although we know that the level of the epidemic in the DRC is very high,” he told a press conference at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

He said Uganda also reported two confirmed cases in the capital Kampala, including the death of one person, an American working in the DRC. confirmed that you have it and transferred to Germany. American doctor Peter Stafford, whose family lived with him in the DRC, was evacuated to Germany and was receiving medical treatment, Serge said on Tuesday.

“There are many factors that call for serious concern about the possibility of further spread and deaths,” Tedros said.

“Apart from the confirmed cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths,” he said. “We expect those numbers to continue to increase, given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the disease was discovered.”

Ebola outbreak is not a “pandemic emergency”

On Sunday, Tedros declared the situation a public health emergency of global concern – the second highest level of alarm under the legally binding International Health Regulations (IHR) – prompting emergency responses in countries around the world.

The WHO emergency committee convened to assess the outbreak met on Tuesday.

“The current situation and the way to deal with a public health emergency of international concern has been met, and we agree that the current situation is no longer a sufficient way to deal with a pandemic emergency,” the chair of the committee, Lucille Blumberg, told South African journalists.

Anais Legand, the WHO’s chief of viral hemorrhagic fever, said that investigations are still ongoing to determine how long Ebola has been spreading in eastern DRC.

“Looking at this rate, we think it started a few months ago, but the investigation is still ongoing and our main thing is to break the chain of transmission through the tracing system, to isolate and take care of all the suspects and confirmed cases,” he said.

WHO responds to US criticism

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday said the WHO was “too late” to identify the deadly outbreak.

President Trump, in one of his first actions to return to office last year, began to move a US withdrawal from WHOit has been severely criticized for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many public health officials and experts he warned at the time that, as one of the world’s largest donors of health in the world through international and national organizations, including the WHO, America’s move to withdraw from such programs can have an impact on efforts to provide life-saving health care and fight the outbreak of deadly diseases, especially in low-income countries.

Asked about Rubio’s criticism, Tedros said “perhaps what the secretary said … may be due to a lack of understanding of how the IHR works, and the obligations of the WHO and other organizations,” he explained, explaining that the organization is working to support countries instead of replacing them in responding to the outbreak.