Coronavirus data from countries outside China still not being shared with WHO

The World Health Organisation said on Tuesday that data security regulations have been delaying the delivery of crucial information about the spread of the novel coronavirus outside mainland China.

“We continually ask [national health authorities] that they share with us the core data that we need and I would say that it hasn’t been absolutely smooth sailing with any country so far because we’ve had to request a number of countries to speed up their data sharing,” Michael Ryan, the head of health emergencies programmes for the WHO, the United Nations health agency says.

“In some cases there are data protection issues, there are citizen protection issues, there are issues around the sharing of individualised data on individual patients and then there are obviously some logistical issues,” Ryan told reporters in a briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

“This has not been through a lack of transparency; this has been through the urgency and difficulties of gathering data in these situations, collating that data, and sharing it outside the country,” he added.

On January 31, after initially declining to do so, the WHO declared the novel coronavirus epidemic to be a public health emergency of international concern – also known as a PHEIC – citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion. There are more than 1,000 confirmed coronavirus cases outside mainland China, including 610 in Japan, 81 in Singapore and 62 in Hong Kong.

“We fully recognise that all of the affected counties are under extreme duress, and their primary responsibility is to their own citizens and dealing with the public health challenge that they face,” Ryan said.

Like other WHO officials before him, Ryan reiterated praise for the measures Beijing has taken to control the epidemic within its borders.