Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) have urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the international coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
Merkley and Young serve as the top Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee that oversees multilateral institutions, including the WHO, according to a statement issued via email from Merkley’s office on Tuesday.
Declaring the outbreak a public health emergency would enable the WHO to issue trade and travel restrictions to help contain the outbreak, and could help incentivize governments to dedicate international assistance to bolster the capacity of health systems worldwide to respond to the virus, said the statement.
“We write today to express our profound concern about the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in the People’s Republic of China, on December 27, 2019,” the Senators wrote in a letter to WHO head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We urge you in your capacity as Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) to formally declare the crisis a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) and issue legally-binding country-specific recommendations to forestall the disease’s rapid spread in China and globally.”
While the WHO initially declined to declare a PHEIC in a Jan. 22 emergency meeting, the Senators urged the WHO to reconsider and reverse this decision, especially considering the climbing death toll and the disease’s rapid international spread in the last several days, according to the press release.
Five cases have now been confirmed within the United States, and the disease has spread to 20 countries and territories.
Los senadores señalaron que la propia definición de la OMS para un PHEIC “implica un evento que es grave, inusual o inesperado, con un riesgo significativo de propagación global, y puede requerir una acción inmediata por parte de la comunidad internacional. Dada la ya alarmante proliferación del brote más allá de las fronteras chinas, así como los procedimientos de detección y otras medidas que países como Estados Unidos ya han adoptado en respuesta, cuestionamos el veredicto de la OMS de que el coronavirus no cumple con esos criterios y le instamos a que revocar la decisión después de la próxima reunión del panel en las próximas semanas”.
The Senators also noted that, following two earlier coronavirus epidemics — severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) — the WHO neglected to declare public health emergencies of international concern.
While the WHO waited, the outbreaks spread, and each killed over 800 people, said the statement.
“Esperamos que esta vez la determinación no se demore”, concluyeron los Senadores.
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