World Health Organisation call to arms against virus needs global response to help China

International community ‘should be doing all it can to assist China in its efforts to contain the virus’, English academic says

Japanese professor of virology calls on Beijing to share more information with the WHO, such as biological materials and epidemiological information

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Experts say the global community must work together to fight the coronavirus outbreak that started in China. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:00pm, 31 Jan 2020Updated: 5:20pm, 15 Feb 2020

The World Health Organisation’s decision to declare the new coronavirus a global public health emergency is a call to all nations to try and stop the spread of the pathogen across borders. But doctors said Beijing’s handling of the outbreak is unlikely to change because the country has already taken unprecedented measures to contain it.

The UN health agency has yet to issue any advisory against travel to China, as it did during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic in 2002-03.

“The global community should be doing all it can to assist China in its efforts to contain the virus. This is an important act of global solidarity to assist China, and is critical in trying to help prevent global spread,” said Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner, a lecturer in global health law at Keele University in England.

“What is crucial now, is how governments and aid agencies respond to this declaration – the WHO needs to be given the tools to bring this outbreak under control. This will certainly involve a large increase in financial help from [United Nations] member states, as well as collaborating with other UN agencies.”

On Thursday, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), citing the potential of the virus – officially known as 2019-nCoV – to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.

The announcement came as the number of infections continued to rise from the virus that appeared a month ago in the central China city of Wuhan. As of Thursday, the pathogen had infected 9,934 people in mainland China and killed 213, according to the health authorities.