– Europa Press/Contact/Lian Yi – Archive
MADRID, 24 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus swiftly rejected arguments made by the United States regarding its decision to leave the United Nations health agency this Saturday, particularly in response to recommendations issued during the coronavirus pandemic.
US Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr., known for his vaccine skepticism and promotion of pseudoscientific information, claimed the WHO was driven by “a politicized and bureaucratic agenda driven by hostile nations” and that pandemic-era restrictions directly contributed to American deaths.
The pandemic tragically resulted in over 1.2 million deaths in the United States—the highest national death toll and the 16th highest fatality rate per million inhabitants—and impacted more than 100 million people during the first Trump Administration.
Tedros addressed these accusations directly on social media, stating the WHO never *recommended* governments impose masks, vaccines, or lockdowns. He clarified that suggestions regarding mask use, social distancing, and inoculation were merely recommendations, offered as technical advice.
“WHO supported sovereign governments with technical advice and guidance, developed from emerging evidence on COVID-19, so that they could make policy decisions that benefited their citizens,” Tedros explained, emphasizing that “each government made its own decisions, based on its needs and circumstances.”
The WHO’s chief epidemiologist, Maria Van Kerkhove, also responded to similar claims made by US Undersecretary of Health Jim O’Neill, who accused the UN agency of “ignoring the first warnings about COVID-19 from Taiwan in 2019, pretending that Taiwan did not exist,” and criticized “Eurocrats in Geneva.”
“All false,” Kerkhove countered. “I know first-hand, as the technical person responsible for COVID-19, that the WHO detected the signal from Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019,” she stated, referencing the virus’s origin. “Taiwan did not warn us: it asked us for information that same day. We have not ignored Taiwan, we do not ignore science, and the WHO never recommended confinements,” she concluded.
