Memos reveal China was slow to share critical coronavirus data with World Health Organization

China was slow to share critical information about the new coronavirus with the World Health Organisation (WHO) throughout January, frustrating top officials and hampering the early response, internal recordings have revealed.

While the WHO publicly praised the Chinese government for its "very impressive" commitment to transparency in the initial phases of the outbreak, the reality was quite the opposite, an Associated Press investigation has shown.

"We're going on very minimal information," Maria Van Kerkhove, an American epidemiologist and WHO technical lead for Covid-19, said in one internal meeting in the second week of January, according to a recording obtained by AP.

"It's clearly not enough for you to do proper planning," she said.

At a separate meeting, Dr Gauden Galea, the WHO's top official in China, said: "We're currently at the stage where yes, they're giving it to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV [a state-owned broadcaster]."

At this stage, in early January, there were fewer than 100 cases, a number that was nearing 10,000 when the WHO declared a global health emergency at the end of the month. That figure now stands at more than six million.

Two major findings come out of the investigation, which comes amid growing international scrutiny of China's handling of the crisis. Despite WHO leaders stating that China "immediately" shared the virus genome sequence, authorities resisted doing so for more than a week after three government laboratories had separately mapped the genetics of the virus.

The delay was largely due to tight controls on information and fierce internal competition within China's Centre for Disease Control (CDC). It was only after a private lab in Shanghai published the sequence on the website virological.org that the CDC scrambled to do the same.

There were also frustrations within the WHO that China was not sharing enough data to assess whether there was sustained human to human transmission, or ascertain the risk that the new virus posed to the rest of the world.

The disparity between the WHO's public praise and private frustration is largely due to the limited powers accorded to the agency to coax information out of member states, experts say.

Under international law, countries are required to share data about potential disease outbreaks with the WHO, which is then obliged to quickly alert other member states about an evolving crisis. But the system relies on trust.

"WHO has no power at all to make countries report – there's no international police force," David Heymann, an epidemiologist and former assistant director general of the WHO, told The Telegraph.

"When the International Health Regulations (IHRs) were revised in 2005, one of the questions was: should they put more teeth into them? And nobody was in favour of introducing sanctions."

Instead, the WHO has to rely on diplomacy to encourage countries to share information. Experts say it is likely that the agency believed standing by China publicly was the best way to keep the government on side.

"The WHO is in a really difficult position," Dr Clare Wenham, professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, told The Telegraph. "They might be having these conversations behind closed doors, but doing so publicly would really jeopardise any potential information sharing.

"They're walking a tightrope because the IHRs are not enforceable. If they pushed China too far, there was a risk that the government would just say 'no', close lines of communication and stop sharing anything at all."

But China's resistance was triggering mounting frustration within the organisation in January.

"The fact is, we're two to three weeks into an event, we don't have a laboratory diagnosis, we don't have an age, sex or geographic distribution, we don't have an epi curve," Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO's chief of emergencies, said during a meeting in the second week of January.

Dr Galea made similar points, saying: "We have informally and formally been requesting more epidemiological information. But when asked for specifics, we could get nothing."

Documents from the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), published on Friday, have revealed that experts in the UK also complained about a lack of data from China in the early stages of the outbreak.

"Greater sharing of data on the outbreak is essential," minutes from February 4 note. "Lack of data sharing is seriously hampering understanding of Sars-Cov-2."

The Foreign Office was also asked to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to "ensure there is a coordinated message coming from the UK on the need for greater sharing of data internationally".

Almost a month before the Sage meeting, top WHO officials were complaining that China was providing only the minimum amount of information required by international law and there was little WHO could do, according to AP.

Dr Ryan noted that, in September 2019, the WHO issued a rare public rebuke, suggesting Tanzania was withholding details about a potential Ebola outbreak. "We have to be consistent. The danger now is that despite our good intent… especially if something does happen, there will be a lot of finger-pointing at WHO," he said.

His fears appear to have played out. Onlookers have raised concerns that the WHO has both become a scapegoat for governments that have been slow to tackle the virus, and a "proxy battlefield" for a power struggle between the US and China.

Historically the WHO's biggest funder, the US administration said on Friday that it would cut ties with the organisation and withdraw funding. Donald Trump has repeatedly accused the agency of being "China-centric" and slow to respond to the coronavirus threat.

In response, the WHO has insisted that it acted and shared the information it had rapidly. And, in declaring a public health emergency on January 30, it gave countries ample time to prepare.

During the World Health Assembly in mid May, the agency also agreed to an "independent evaluation" about how it handled the early stages of the crisis.

Meanwhile, China's President, Xi Jinping, has pledged to provide the international coronavirus response with roughly $2 billion over the next two years to fight Covid-19 and insisted China has always shared information "in a most timely fashion".

But experts say that, while the latest revelations demonstrate WHO was not colluding with China, the findings could be twisted.

"My main concern is that these revelations are going to add fuel to the fire and that Trump is now going to say China was hiding and WHO let them get away with it," said Dr Wenham.

"The reality is that WHO is walking a tightrope due to the structure of the IHRs, which have ultimately failed. I'll be shocked if they aren't revised at some point post-coronavirus."

The Chinese government and WHO declined to comment on the investigation.

Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security