A global inquiry has recognized crucial failures in the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic when Chinese authorities could have acted "more forcefully" to protect public health. The inquiry, which reports to the WHO, has also found that most countries did not act on warnings about early cases and did not share information fast enough when cases emerged.

The report also criticises the WHO for taking 3 weeks to form an emergency group to counter the virus and being too slow to declare the crisis to be a pandemic.

The findings are part of a second report from an ongoing inquiry chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who said they would look further into the "coherence" of the health response.

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response said there were "lost opportunities" in the early stages of the outbreak when basic public health measures should have been put in place.

“According to the information analyzed by the panel, the reality is that only a minority of countries took full advantage of the information available to them to respond to the evidence of an emerging epidemic”, the repo0rt said.

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