24 Jan 2020 10:25

WHO Emergency Committee to meet again soon to discuss coronavirus data update - Rospotrebnadzor

MOSCOW. Jan 24 (Interfax) - The Emergency Committee for Pneumonia due to the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, which met at the initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) with the participation of Russia's Rospotrebnadzor, has discussed the current pneumonia situation in China and has decided to urge the WHO general director to convene another meeting of the Committee in the near future for evaluating the situation again.

"A teleconference of the Emergency Committee for Pneumonia due to the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) was held on January 22-23 with the participation of Rospotrebnadzor to discuss the ongoing outbreak of the illness in the People's Republic of China. The Committee also discussed the preparedness and response of countries which had seen imported cases of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV (the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Thailand) and recommendations for actions to be taken on the regional and global levels. The Emergency Committee for Pneumonia due to the Novel Coronavirus 2019-nCoV did not declare the sanitary-epidemiological situation to be a significant emergency according to the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005)," the statement, which was published on the Rospotrebnadzor website, said.

As well as a Rospotrebnadzor expert, the 15-member Committee includes representatives of France, China, the Netherlands, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Senegal, Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, the statement said.

"Representatives of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, IHR Emergency Committees of countries with confirmed imported cases - Korea, Japan, and Thailand - and representatives of the WHO headquarters delivered reports at the conference," it said.