A probe has concluded that the World Health Organisation (WHO) could have sounded the alarm for the COVID-19 pandemic ‘sooner’. A global panel investigating the world’s response to the deadly pandemic has observed that the catastrophic scale of COVID-19 could have been prevented had the warning signs been heeded.

“The catastrophic scale of the COVID-19 pandemic could have been prevented had the warning signs been heeded,” the panel concluded, news agency AFP reported. 

Former US President Donald Trump had also blamed the WHO and alleged that its response to the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘delayed’. While suspending US’ funding to WHO, Trump had, in fact, alleged that the world health body had ‘colluded’ with China.

 “(The WHO) consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier,” Trump had said in a letter to WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on May 18.

Over 16 crore affected the world over

The deadly pandemic has affected almost 16 crore people the world over and killed 33.19 lakh people across the world. While the US is the worst-affected country in the world with over 3.27 crore cases, India and Brazil are the next in line with 2.33 crore cases and 1.52 crore cases respectively.

The revelation of the probe panel comes at a time when India has been witnessing a severe COVID-19 wave. Earlier today, WHO said that it does not refer to COVID-19 variants by the names of the countries they first originated in. In response to media reports which cited B.1.617 variant as ‘Indian Variant’, WHO said that the UN body refers to viruses by their scientific names.

“WHO does not identify viruses or variants with names of countries they are first reported from. We refer to them by their scientific names and request all to do the same for consistency,”