Photo: the WHO emblem

The Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority has targeted the World Health Organization (WHO), seeking "Taiwan independence" by using the COVID-19 pandemic. Such an attempt is doomed to fail, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said, following the Taiwan authority's accusation that the WHO "refused to act" on an email it sent four months ago concerning the possible human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. 

What the DPP publicized was a false proposition with political intentions, and some Western politicians followed suit, circulating the rumors and targeting the Chinese mainland and the WHO. Such actors have ulterior motives, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Friday.

The DPP claimed that Taiwan's health department had sent a warning email to the WHO concerning the possible human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 on December 31, 2019, and that the WHO failed to disclose the information. These claims were not facts, Zhu said. 

The email did not mention "human-to-human transmission" and it was based on information from the Wuhan's health commission, Zhu said. 

The email simply proved that Wuhan's health commission had made the information public to the global community in a timely manner, Zhu said.

The Taiwan authority also claimed it has been unable to communicate with the WHO, despite the fact that medical experts from Taiwan have been participating in WHO meetings, and 24 Taiwan experts joined technical WHO meetings at the beginning of 2019 and continued to attend these meetings until March. The Chinese mainland had shared information on the COVID-19 with the Taiwan authority on 127 occasions by Monday, Zhu said.

The DPP failed to mention these facts to the people in the island, but continued to publicize their "warning" email. It's quite clear that the DPP's focus has not been on public health and  COVID-19 prevention and control, and that this has merely disclosed the DPP's political goal of seeking independence by utilizing the pandemic, Zhu said. 

The WHO is a specialized UN agency comprised of sovereign states. Taiwan's participation in the WHO needs to be arranged in a reasonable and appropriate manner under the one-China principle. 

Global Times