WHO starts data-sharing effort to prevent pandemics. Will nations cooperate?

Name: Covid-19 pandemic ‘long way from over’ says WHO, as global infections continue to grow
Uploaded: 2021-09-02T10:07:55.000Z
Duration: 4 min 21 s
Description: Covid-19 pandemic ‘long way from over’ says WHO, as global infections continue to grow

WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence opens in Berlin backed by initial US$100 million from Germany

It aims to pool global disease data, and produce tools to predict outbreaks – but is reliant on countries taking part

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World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has again called on countries to share disease data. Photo: AFP

Simone McCarthy

Published: 6:07pm, 2 Sep 2021Updated: 10:16pm, 2 Sep 2021

The World Health Organization has launched an effort to speed up disease detection and response by bringing it into the digital age, using advanced computing and international data sharing.

The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, based in Berlin, will get an initial US$100 million backing from Germany and is this year set to open a permanent campus in the city. It will be headed by Chikwe Ihekweazu, currently the director general of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

But experts say the hub’s success will depend on whether countries share disease data. World leaders have been mulling tightening legal requirements related to that in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus touched on that at the hub’s opening on Wednesday and repeated so far unanswered calls for China to share more information about the coronavirus, first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

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Covid-19 pandemic ‘long way from over’ says WHO, as global infections continue to grow

“The reason [the Covid-19 origins study] is politicised is because access to data and information is not as you would expect, it’s a problem, so in order to make it a scientific debate we have to share data, and that’s what we are asking … to China to please share data,” Tedros said in Berlin.

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