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Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters/File

U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has said he would pull funding to the WHO amid accusations that it had taken Chinese data at face value, in turn slowing the response in other countries. The Trump administration in particular has faced criticism for downplaying the virus and for its tardy response to the pandemic.

“They missed the call,” Trump said about the WHO last week. “They could have called it months earlier.”

Criticism of the WHO began in earnest on Jan. 14, when Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the organization, tweeted a message nearly identical to that of the Chinese government, saying researchers “have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus. By Jan. 20 Chinese officials finally confirmed that the virus could spread that way and shut down the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated. Another week passed before the WHO declared a public health emergency.

Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu rejected claims earlier this month that China has purposely doctored its data to downplay the death toll from the virus. In response to questions from a reporter, Hajdu said we should not indulge in “conspiracy theories” aimed at China “on the internet,” and said there was no reason not to trust Chinese numbers.

Charles Burton, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a two-time counsellor at the Canadian Embassy to China, said China has unfairly categorized any doubts about its data as “politicization” of the issue.

“In fact, what one really wants out of China is complete, transparent and honest data — and we know that we haven’t got that,” Burton said, adding Chinese information is always vetted by central agencies seeking to prop up the government message, whether for internal or international purposes.

“From that point of view one is naturally skeptical of all Chinese statistics and reports, particularly those of this nature,” he said.

Many observers have been more generous toward the WHO, saying it has little control over the data it receives.

“The WHO is an international organization, it doesn’t collect its own data, and so it is almost entirely reliant on the data provided by members states,” said Rex Brynen, a political science professor at McGill University.

“If the Chinese are not offering accurate data, either because the government is covering up, or simply because they don’t have accurate figures themselves, there’s not a whole lot the WHO can do.”

Brynen, who formerly worked for the World Bank, said international organizations are inherently beholden to major powers for information, particularly to the U.S., which regularly asserts its foreign policy on the world stage.

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder