The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety devoted a large part of its meeting on Thursday 25 June to the management of the new coronavirus and the first lessons to be learned from the crisis. While MEP Silvia Sardone (Italy) of the ID party demanded the resignation of the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, who was present by videoconference, other parliamentarians were more moderate.
WHO fine-tunes its defence
“Donald Trump is taking the wrong decision by suspending US financial participation in WHO at a time when this organisation is more necessary than ever”, Peter Liese (EPP, Germany) said at the opening of the meeting. However, the MEP, along with the majority of his colleagues, called on the Director-General of the UN organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to do some soul-searching.
As the World Health Assembly decided in mid-May to launch an “independent evaluation” of WHO's management of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Director-General said he would be happy to acknowledge the mistakes made (see EUROPE 12490/1). He responded in turn to accusations that the organisation had been slow to characterise the Covid-19 crisis as a pandemic, had erroneously recommended keeping borders open, had given poor scientific advice or had been too accommodating towards China.
On the issue of borders, in particular, he said that WHO had based its recommendations on the International Health Regulations (IHR), which did not encourage travel restrictions. But they were not prohibited either, he added, noting that the responsibility lay with states.
The situation in the EU continues to give cause for concern
In the morning, the WHO Regional Office for Europe had warned of a possible resurgence of cases in Europe. “30 countries have seen an increase in the number of new cases accumulated over the last 2 weeks”, the organisation's regional director Hans Kluge explained at a press conference. “In 11 of these countries, the acceleration of transmission has led to a dramatic upsurge that, if unchecked, will push health systems to the brink once again in Europe”.
This provoked the ire of Sweden, one of the 11 countries listed, which considered the statement “very serious”.
Treatments and vaccines
At a meeting of the European Parliament's Working Party on Health on the evening of 25 June, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) indicated that it had contacts with the industry for 34 proposed vaccines and 135 treatments, including Remdesivir for which it has just given the go-ahead for a conditional marketing authorisation (see EUROPE 12514/8).
The accessibility of a potential vaccine was also widely discussed, with Petra De Sutter (Greens/EFA, Belgium) pointing out that the European strategy risked creating fragmentation (see EUROPE 12508/4). “A vaccine must be a global public good. But it should be by consensus of the whole world. Without that, it can't work. Some countries are moving towards mechanisms to provide for themselves. And this could compromise global access or make it a global public good. We therefore need strong political commitment”, reacted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, suggesting a certain scepticism towards the European approach. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)