Ms Emily O'Reilly:

When the first draft of the investigation came back to me, my colleagues had stated they found the interaction with the Chinese centre for disease control was fine. I was a bit surprised at this because I had read a lot about this and we all read about what happened in China. The WHO is still wrestling with finding out its exact origins. People have read all the speculation and the reports about what happened at the very beginning. I found it a bit puzzling as to why the ECDC would say everything was fine with the Chinese authorities. I asked my colleagues to ask again or find out the reasons. I do not have the report in front of me so I cannot exactly detail it but my impression was that the ECDC stated that insofar as the authorities they were dealing with were able to give it certain information, they gave it that information but the issue was the chain of command. The Chinese centre for disease control could not independently give the information. It had to go up to the very top to get authorisation for the release of information. Insofar as it shared the information it was allowed to share, it did so but the question remains as to what had happened at the other level and what was kept back. It is a bit of a subtle distinction but I think I get what they were talking about. I felt this needed to be explained, given all of the speculation and negative reports on how the Chinese communicated about the virus from the start. It was right to be a little bit questioning on it.