4 July, Kathmandu
The World Health Organization says that in the early stages of the COVID-19, it was alerted by its own office in China, and not by China itself to the first pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
The U.N. health body has been accused by U.S. President Donald Trump of failing to provide the information needed to control the pandemic and of being complacent towards Beijing, charges it denies.
On April 9, WHO published an initial timeline of its communications, partly in response to criticism of its early response to the outbreak that has now claimed more than 521,000 lives worldwide.
In that chronology, WHO had said only that the Wuhan municipal health commission in the province of Hubei had on Dec. 31 reported cases of pneumonia. The U.N. health agency did not, however, specify who had notified it.