Page - 538 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

VULNERABLE538 Claim 2: The People’s Republic of China Failed to Provide WHO Timely, Accurate, and Sufficiently Detailed Public Health Information IHR Article 6 further governs notification of relevant public health events and requires that: a State Party shall … communicate to WHO timely, accurate and sufficiently detailed public health information available to it on the notified event … including case definitions, laboratory results … number of cases and deaths, conditions affecting the spread of the disease and the health measures employed; and report … the difficulties faced and support needed in responding…8 Between December 31 and January 15, there appear to be measures taken at municipal, provincial, and national levels in China to both share and suppress information. Researchers mapped the coronavi- rus’s genetic information by January 2, 2020, and posted that infor- mation on a public genetic data repository on January 9, 2020. On January 14, WHO tweeted that Chinese authorities had seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” Epidemiologists and clinicians need to know much about new diseases to effectively respond. This includes when people get sick, their symptoms, and other characteristics, such as age, gender, and underlying medical conditions, that increase risk. During this period, the first case was confirmed in Thailand. On January 20, the first case was announced in South Korea. Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese doctor coordinating response, announced the virus could pass between people. A New  England  Journal  of  Medicine study revealed that the first 425 patients in Wuhan, between December 10 and January 4, expe- rienced long delays before admission to hospitals.9 Person-to-person spread occurred as early as mid-December, and cases were dou- bling every seven days from January 11 to January 17, 2020. As early as December 30, 2019, physicians treating (what is now known as) COVID-19 patients were censured or arrested for attempting to report 8. Ibid at art 5. 9. Li Q et al, “Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia” (2020) 382:13 N Engl J Med 1199, DOI: <10.1056/NEJMoa2001316>.