The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning a kind of international pandemic early warning center in Berlin. The German government will provide start-up funding of 30 million euros.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning a kind of international pandemic early warning center in Berlin. The WHO Hub is to start work in September, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained at a press conference on Wednesday. Berlin is a good location for the center because it brings together many important players in health and digitalization, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

According to the WHO, the center will evaluate data quickly and in detail in order to detect and, if possible, prevent future pandemic outbreaks, or at least respond to them better than was the case with the Corona crisis. "The Covid 19 pandemic exposed the inadequacies of global information systems on pandemics and epidemics," Tedros said.