Coronavirus - Photo Credit WHO
# 7486
Later today the World Health Organization will hold a virtual press conference to discuss the results of the second meeting of the IHR Emergency Committee which has been convened to decide whether the threat posed by MERS-CoV rises to the level of a "public health emergency of international concern" or PHEIC.
Overnight Helen Branswell published a terrific backgrounder (h/t Crof) that looks at what a PHEIC declaration really means, and includes comments by crisis communications expert Dr. Peter Sandman and Michael Osterholm, Director of CIDRAP.
Follow the link below to read:
Is MERS an emergency? Language of IHR boxes WHO into a messaging dilemma
By Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press July 16, 2013
For a summary of what has transpired to date with this emergency committee meeting, you may wish to revisit these blogs (here, here), this overview by Lisa Schnirring at CIDRAP NEWS, or the following WHO documents:
IHR Emergency Committee concerning Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)
Emergency committee members
- First Meeting of the IHR Emergency Committee on MERS-CoV
9 July 2013 - Press conference with Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director General for Health Security and the Environment on MERS-Coronavirus, 5 July 2013
pdf, 75kb
I’ll have an update later today after the press conference.
