(23 Jan 2020) A viral illness in China that has sickened hundreds of people is not yet a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
WHO issued its evaluation after Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities earlier in the day and canceled major events in the capital, Beijing, during the Lunar New Year holiday period to try to contain the new virus.
The United Nations health agency made the decision after independent experts spent two days assessing information about the spread of the newly identified coronavirus.
“It’s too early to consider this as a public health emergency of international concern,” Didier Houssin, the chair of the emergency advisory committee, said during a news conference in Geneva, noting that the panel “was very divided, almost 50-50.”
WHO defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response. Previous global emergencies have been declared for the emergence of Zika virus in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic, and polio.
A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous foreign governments to restrict travel and trade to affected countries. Deciding whether an outbreak amounts to an international crisis therefore can also be politically fraught.
Hundreds of people infected with the new virus have fallen ill in China, and 17 have died.
The first cases appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub in central China.
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