Tedros says COVID-19 review will not impede WHO work

FILE PHOTO: WHO news conference on the novel coronavirus (COVID-2019)

GENEVA (Reuters) - World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday he was confident a review announced a day earlier of the WHO's handling of the coronavirus pandemic would not interfere with its response to the disease.

Tedros said the decision to start the inquiry "gives the responsibility actually to me, which is very important, so that we can have a balancing act, so the evaluation doesn't affect the response".

"We felt that starting it now can really help us to understand how ... the whole response is happening," he told an online briefing from Geneva.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Michael Shields in Geneva; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Edmund Blair)