Public health experts say the pandemic has exposed weaknesses of the World Health Organization, which has no authority to force foreign governments to divulge medical information or open doors to its hospitals and labs.
It took nearly a month before China allowed a WHO delegation to visit the country after it acknowledged the human-to-human transmission. Beijing approved a joint WHO-China mission, composed of international scientists and Chinese experts.
He told NBC News the Chinese scientists and doctors he spoke to were well-informed and working in ultra-modern facilities, and ready to discuss key scientific questions that needed to be addressed."I could have been visiting a lab at NIH," Lane said. Lane visited the cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen but was not part of the smaller team that traveled to Wuhan."I would like to have gotten to Wuhan, I would like to have heard more about what was going on," he said.
As for criticism that the joint WHO-China report painted an overly positive picture, Lane said he distinguishes between the more subjective passages and sections with clinical data and details of how patients were being treated or isolated. Some language should be taken"with a grain of salt," but he said"the data in the report was quite solid and, I thought, quite informative."
The Trump administration, which has halted U.S. funding for the WHO, has struggled to rally international support for its stance on the U.N. organization, with only Australia joining calls for an independent inquiry into how the agency responded to the epidemic. Other U.S. allies favor a review and possible reforms of the WHO but not until the emergency has passed, foreign diplomats said."Now is not the time," said one Western diplomat.
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