Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) on a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) raising questions about the process the WHO is using to name COVID-19 variants.
While the WHO says they are naming COVID-19 variants after letters in the Greek alphabet, they skipped the letter “Xi,” seemingly to avoid naming a variant after China’s president Xi Jinping. The senators note that this is just one of numerous examples of the WHO showing deference to the Chinese Communist Party, and putting an emphasis on politics over public health and transparency.
“The World Health Organization’s failure to scrutinize the Chinese Communist Party is a major reason why COVID-19 became a global pandemic and inflicted such damage on the United States. We still do not have sufficient answers for how this happened. China evaded responsibility for the pandemic, and now it seems to have received special treatment and evaded the COVID-19 variant naming process as well,” said Senator Cramer. “The World Health Organization needs to share their true reasons for these naming discrepancies, as well as how they plan to implement a consistent virus naming policy in the future, so we can move forward with consistent and clear guidance.”
“The World Health Organization receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the American taxpayers, and the people in Wyoming have a right to know how our taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Senator Lummis said. “My constituents in Wyoming have the right to expect transparency and consistency from the institutions they help fund. The WHO has provided neither.”
Senators Cramer and Lummis are joined on the letter by Senators John Barrasso (R-WY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).