Why the WHO almost stopped declaring a ‘pandemic’ two years ago

Two years ago, on March 11, 2020, the WHO (World Health Organization) qualified Covid-19 as a pandemic and urged States to take the necessary measures.

This term does not exist in the WHO classification of stages of an epidemic, however, its use caused noise early in the pandemic.

Two years and 6 million deaths later, the WHO says that it launched the emergency alert of international concern six weeks before the official declaration of a pandemic, however, few people listened to it, says the entity.

It was January 30, 2020. The United Nations health agency declared the situation a “public health emergency of international scope” (PHEIC). Outside China, no one had died from the coronavirus and there were less than a hundred infections.

Despite being the highest possible alert level under the WHO International Health Regulations, PHEIC resulted in an overly technical concept. Furthermore, this acronym sounds like the English word “fake”.

It was then only on March 11 that many countries began to realize the real danger. A delay that, according to WHO members, has caused discomfort.

“The world was obsessed with the word pandemic,” said WHO emergency director Michael Ryan. For him, “the alert launched in January was more important than the qualifier in March”.

“What do you prefer? That the alert tells you that it has just started or that a storm is coming?”, he explained during a question session on social networks on Thursday (10). “People weren’t listening. We sounded the alarm and people didn’t react.”

WHO members not only say they are frustrated with the lack of reaction from countries, but also say they have had to deal with criticism of having mismanaged the crisis.

“From the media, and everywhere, they use this argument, that the WHO would have taken a long time to declare a pandemic. It’s false!”, defended Ryan. “We warned the whole world of the imminence of the pandemic.”

On March 11, 2020, “we were so frustrated that we said, Okay, you want a pandemic? Here’s your pandemic!”.

On that day, the coronavirus was already present in several countries, in addition to China, and above all, in Italy and Iran. In total, 118,000 cases had been declared in 114 countries with 4,300 deaths.

Earlier, on March 9, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus had warned that “the threat of a pandemic” had become “very real”.

Two days later, he described the situation as a “pandemic” during a press conference broadcast over the internet. The word “pandemic” was used by him ten times on that occasion.

“We are deeply concerned, both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the levels of inaction,” he said. “So we consider that Covid-19 can be qualified as a pandemic.”

Two years later, Maria Van Kerkhove, responsible for the fight against Covid-19 at the WHO, does not hide her frustration at what she considers to be a misinterpretation of the countries.

“It will happen again! When will we really learn?”, he said during the question round on social networks.

Despite the speeches, at times during the month of February 2020, WHO representatives were directly questioned by journalists about the proximity of the scenario of a pandemic and the risks of the moment. At the same time that they pushed away the idea of ​​declaring the pandemic at that moment, they tried to warn that it was necessary to prepare.

On February 21, for example, an Associated Press reporter asked WHO members about clusters of cases far from China and what that meant for that phase of the Covid outbreak. “Are we getting close to a pandemic?” he asked.

Sylvie Briand, currently director of the Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention department, said the situation was evolving and that, in fact, it was a very different phase of the outbreak “depending on where you look.”

“But, as Dr. Tedros said, we still have this window of opportunity because we think that even if
in some places we have a large number of cases, we can still monitor where they are coming from and what is happening. So we need to continue to monitor the situation very closely until we can say a situation is completely different,” Briand said.

Adhanon then added: “So we are closer to the pandemic? I would like to assure you that we are following this virus 24/7.”

“So we will continue to follow up, but as we speak our situation is that we are still in a phase where containment is possible with a narrow window of opportunity. to say that we are moving to another level,” said the WHO director-general.

Three days later, at another press conference, the matter was addressed again. At that time, there were already 2,074 cases in 28 countries and 23 deaths (without the data from China considered here). Italy, Iran and South Korea saw increasing cases, which was considered worrying.

Adhanon commented again on speculation as to how the pandemic level had been reached.

“We understand why people ask this question. The WHO, as you know, has already declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” he said, noting that the highest alert level was sounded when there were 100 cases outside China and eight cases of documented person-to-person transmission.

“Our decision on whether to use the word pandemic to describe an epidemic is based on an ongoing assessment of the geographic spread of the virus, the severity of the disease and the impact it has on the whole of society,” said the WHO director.

“Right now, we’re not witnessing the unchecked global spread of this virus and we’re not seeing serious illness or death on a larger scale. Does this virus have pandemic potential? It absolutely does. Are we there yet? By our assessment, not yet.”

Adhanon also said that the use of the word pandemic did not fit the facts of the moment, but that it could provoke fear. He then stated that it was the time to focus and prepare for a possible pandemic.