The World Health Organization and Beijing could have acted faster when Covid-19 first surfaced in China, a group investigating the global response has concluded.
In its second report, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response said that an evaluation of the "chronology of the early phase of the outbreak suggests that there was potential for early signs to have been acted on more rapidly".
Covid-19 was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, before seeping beyond China's borders to wreak global havoc, costing more than two million lives and eviscerating economies.
In its report, the panel found it was "clear" that "public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health