WHO sets up expert committee to advise on coronavirus

The World Health Organization has convened a group of international experts to advise it on the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.

The committee, convened under the WHO’s international health regulations, is made up of experts including immunologists, virologists, and epidemiologists and held its first telephone conference on Tuesday 9 July, when it reviewed current information about the disease. This is the first time that an international committee of experts, independent of WHO, has met since the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s assistant director general for health, security, and environment, told a press conference on 4 July that it was unlikely that the committee, convened to investigate the causes of the disease and how it is likely to evolve, would make recommendations on 9 July, but he …