Claim: WHO to reconsider declaring global emergency as China virus evacuations begin.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Wake (Sawyer novel)
text: senior member of the Communist Party, recommends the President order a culling of ten to eleven thousand people in the infected area with an airborne chemical. The President agrees and launches the Changcheng Strategy, cutting off all telephone, satellite, and wireless communication with the rest of the world, so that word of the culling does not spread beyond China's borders. Wong Wai-Jeng, a freedom blogger who is known online as Sinanthropus, attempts to circumvent Internet censorship in China along with many other hackers. Collectively they learn about the bird flu outbreak. Many days after enacting the Changcheng Strategy, Zhang Bo,

title: 2009 flu pandemic in Asia
text: the China Inspection and Quarantine Science Research Institute, the measures already in place in China against bird flu are sufficient for this new disease, also certain lessons were learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak including that the state-controlled media doesn't cover up such events. 2 May, the Chinese government has decided to suspend flights from Mexico to Shanghai, the Foreign Ministry said. Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Administration of China also assigned a charter to transport stranded Chinese visitors back home. Among all carriers, China Eastern Airlines was the first choice as it is based in Shanghai, where the original and

title: Influenza A virus subtype H7N9
text: that the Chinese government would extend the ban for four months. The health minister also said that they plan to prevent diseased birds from entering the market by setting up a facility where imported poultry can be quarantined to ensure they are disease-free. The WHO does not advise against travel to China at this point in time, as there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus. On April 9, 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) activated its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Atlanta at Level II, the second-highest level of alert. Activation was prompted because

title: Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
text: the People's Republic of China. George F. Gao is the director general. He has made contributions to the study of inter-species pathogen transmission. He organized the first World Flu Day on November 1 2018, commemorating the centenary of the influenza Epidemic of 1918-19. It is also the 15-year commemoration of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, which led to China prioritising investment in the public health system. Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC; ) is an agency of the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China based in

title: Severe acute respiratory syndrome
text: to control it, Chinese government officials did not inform the World Health Organization of the outbreak until February 2003. This lack of openness caused delays in efforts to control the epidemic, resulting in criticism of the People's Republic of China from the international community. China has since officially apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS epidemic. The outbreak first appeared on 27 November 2002, when Canada's Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), an electronic warning system that is part of the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), picked up reports of a "flu outbreak"

title: 2009 flu pandemic
text: in preparation. On 12 April 2010, Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's top influenza expert, stated that the system leading to the declaration of a pandemic led to confusion about H1N1 circulating around the world, and he expressed concern that there was a failure to communicate in regard to uncertainties about the new virus, which turned out to be not as deadly as feared. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan has appointed 29 flu experts from outside the organization to conduct a review of WHO's handling of the H1N1 flu pandemic. She has told them, "We want a frank, critical, transparent, credible and independent

title: Severe acute respiratory syndrome
text: authorities on 5 and 11 December. Despite the successes of the network in previous outbreak of diseases, it didn't receive intelligence until the media reports from China several months after the outbreak of SARS. Along with the second alert, WHO released the name, definition, as well as an activation of a coordinated global outbreak response network that brought sensitive attention and containment procedures. By the time the WHO took action, over 500 deaths and an additional 2,000 cases had already occurred worldwide. In early April, after Jiang Yanyong pushed to report the danger to China, there appeared to be a

title: History of the People's Republic of China (2002–present)
text: around the world. The crisis marked a period of national mobilization, where schedules around the country shifted to accommodate for the control of the virus. Many educational institutions closed or had highly regulated schedules during the period between April and November 2003, and businesses were open on a very irregular basis. Restaurants, usually the centre of social life in China, were nearing bankruptcy. Quarantine measures were taken across the country, with designated hospitals in major cities treating the illness. The extreme measures left paranoid citizens with common illnesses to treat themselves at home to avoid contracting the virus at a

title: Timeline of the SARS outbreak
text: large state banks are working with minimal staff levels. On April 28, WHO declared the outbreak in Vietnam to be over as no new cases were reported for 20 days. On April 29, leaders of member countries of ASEAN and the PRC premier held an emergency summit in Bangkok, Thailand in order to address the SARS problem. Among the decisions made were the setting-up of a ministerial-level task force and uniform pre-departure health screening in airports. On April 30, the World Health Organization lifted the SARS travel warning for Toronto. The decision was made because "it is satisfied with local

title: 2009 flu pandemic by country
text: within two weeks were to be quarantined. On 2 May, the Chinese government suspended flights from Tijuana to Shanghai. Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Administration of China assigned a charter to transport stranded Chinese visitors home. The first suspected case was reported on 10 May 2009. On 29 April the Food and Health Bureau of Hong Kong advised Hong Kong residents not to travel to Mexico unless absolutely necessary. The first case was a Mexican who arrived from Shanghai. The Bureau escalated the alert level from "alert" to "serious", which activated health protection measures in all ports of entry of Hong

title: Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network
text: WHO. Earliest signs of the outbreak in China were reported February 11–24, when multiple people were reported to contract the disease. WHO was notified February 28 and then directly notified GOARN March 13. The first members of a WHO/GOARN outbreak control team arrived in Hong Kong March 14, followed by another 5-person GOARN team 12 days later. This second team transitioned to Guangdong, where they investigated the earliest cases of SARS and conducted interviews with health staff. The outbreak was declared by WHO to be contained by July 5. Worldwide, GOARN carried out many of the operations for the initial

title: Dai Xu
text: the "Global Times", "People's Daily Online", and "Utopia (Internet forum)". He has published many books on military affairs. Dai is often noted for expressing hawkish or controversial opinions. In August 2012, for example, he described Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan as "the three running dogs of the United States in Asia," and argued that "We only need to kill one, and it will immediately bring the others to heel." In 2013, Dai wrote "Bird flu is the newest US bioweapon. It's all about terrifying lasers, and much less about engineering a new strain of bird flu to deploy against Chinese

title: Zhang Dejiang
text: the SARS crisis, which began in Guangdong. Zhang initially responded to the outbreak by restricting the flow of information to the public about SARS. While Zhang and other leaders in Guangdong were accused of mishandling SARS, they were praised by the World Health Organization and the central government for controlling the spread of the virus locally as well as the treatment regime employed to treat SARS patients. Zhang arrived in Guangdong at a time when the province's economic growth seemed to be lagging coastal provinces such as Jiangsu and Shandong, both of which were a mere several hundred billion yuan

title: Yi Guan
text: Yi Guan Yi Guan is a Chinese virologist who, in 2014, was ranked as 11th in the world by Thomson Reuters (now known as Clarivate Analytics) among global researchers in the field of microbiology. His research on the viral respiratory disease SARS allowed the Chinese government to successfully avert the 2004 outbreak of this disease. He is the current Director (China affairs) of the State Key Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases University of Hong Kong. In early 2017, Guan warned that the H7N9 influenza virus "poses the greatest threat to humanity than any other in the past 100 years." Guan

title: World Health Organization
text: involving the H1N1 influenza virus was declared by the then Director-General Margaret Chan in April 2009. Margret Chan declared in 2010 that the H1N1 has moved into the post-pandemic period. By the post-pandemic period critics claimed the WHO had exaggerated the danger, spreading "fear and confusion" rather than "immediate information". Industry experts countered that the 2009 pandemic had led to "unprecedented collaboration between global health authorities, scientists and manufacturers, resulting in the most comprehensive pandemic response ever undertaken, with a number of vaccines approved for use three months after the pandemic declaration. This response was only possible because of the

title: World Health Assembly
text: For All"’ approaches to health promotion. It also endorsed the first World Immunization Week. In her address to the 66th WHA in May 2013, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan traced a brief history of revisions to the International Health Regulations following the SARS outbreak in 2002-3, the "first severe new disease of the 21st century." She observed that the two new diseases WHO is dealing with in 2013 are the novel coronavirus (MERS), from the same family as SARS, detected in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, and the first-ever human infections with the H7N9 avian influenza virus reported in China in 2013.

title: History of the People's Republic of China (2002–present)
text: credited to General secretary, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. At the heart of the crisis, Hu made a high-profile trip to Guangdong and Wen ate lunch with students at Beijing University. Just as China was emerging out of the SARS crisis, it became one of the most accessible breeding spots of the avian flu outbreak. While four other Southeastern Asian countries have reported cases of Avian Flu before China, the Chinese government began taking precautions not long after the SARS outbreak in 2003. Beijing has maintained a strict and transparent policy to gain back a reputation damaged heavily

title: 1999 Jiji earthquake
text: United Nations, which recognises the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of the island, and so could not act without the approval of the Beijing government. On 25 September President Lee Teng-hui declared a state of emergency in the affected areas, giving sweeping powers to local authorities to ignore the usual bureaucratic and legal restrictions on measures to bring relief to people and locations most in need. This was the first time emergency powers had been used since the death of former President Chiang Ching-kuo in 1989. Many charities, corporations, and private individuals contributed to the relief effort

title: Timeline of the SARS outbreak
text: the status of the SARS outbreak. China's southern Guangdong province reported 361 new infections and 9 new deaths, increasing the total Mainland China figures previously reported at end-February. The virus was also detected in Beijing and Shanghai. The WHO also advised travelers to avoid Hong Kong and Guangdong during a press briefing. On April 3, a WHO team of international scientists landed in Guangzhou from Beijing to discuss with officials, but the team was yet to inspect any suspected origin or any medical facilities on the progress of infection control. Fifteen of the quarantined Amoy Gardens residents at Lei Yue

title: 2009 flu pandemic
text: to raise the level of pandemic alert were based on clearly defined virological and epidemiological criteria. It is hard to bend these criteria, no matter what the motive". On 7 May 2009, the WHO stated that containment was not feasible and that countries should focus on mitigating the effect of the virus. They did not recommend closing borders or restricting travel. On 26 April 2009, the Chinese government announced that visitors returning from flu-affected areas who experienced flu-like symptoms within two weeks would be quarantined. U.S. airlines had made no major changes as of the beginning of June 2009, but