The World Health Organization on Thursday announced it has begun the process to establish an independent panel that will review its handling of the coronavirus pandemic as well as how countries managed the outbreaks around the world.
The announcement comes days after the White House formally informed the United Nations and Congress that the U.S. intends to withdraw from the U.N.-backed agency, a move that would take effect July 2021.
“This is not a standard report that ticks a box and is then put on a shelf to gather dust,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a virtual meeting of the group’s 194 member nations. “This is something we take seriously.”
He explained that the panel, led by Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, will author a report on the matter at the next all-member meeting in November.
Mr. Trump had said earlier this year that the U.S. was pausing contributions to the global health organization before announcing in May that the United States would sever its ties to the group.
The president and others have criticized the WHO for too eagerly accepting the narrative from China, where the coronavirus was first discovered late last year, about the origin and potential dangers of the new virus.
More than 12 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported around the world, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Over 550,000 have died from the virus, while 6.6 million have recovered. The global population stands at 7.8 billion.
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