China had delayed releasing critical information on coronavirus, frustrating WHO

It was in the month of January, 2020 when the World Health Organization was all praises for China for the way it dealt with the speedy recovery of the patients to coronavirus that was newly discovered in China. The WHO had then also thanked the government of China to share the genetic map of the virus soon after the outbreak. But the actual story was very different. The actual delay that was made by China was it significantly delayed to bring out some of the very vital information that could be used to prevent the outbreak to go out of control.

China kept on releasing the genetic map or genome of the virus for more than a week after three governments based labs had actually decoded the information completely. But here is was the tight controls on information and also the competition with the public health system in the country which could have been blamed. The government labs in China released the genome only after another lab had published it on January 11, 2020. Despite that, the Chinese authorities had failed to release a detailed data on the patients and cases for more than two weeks to the WHO.

This made things worse and if things could have been done in time, the outbreak could have been controlled in a better way. Reports say that the WHO officials were appreciating the Chinese government in public so they could bring out more information out of the government. But privately, the WHO officials had complained in January that the Chinese officials were not sharing enough data that could have helped to access how effectively the virus could spread between the people and what risk is posed to the people across the globe.

The story behind the beginning of the pandemic has come out as the health agency has come under scrutiny as to how the pandemic could have been handled globally.

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