Covid-19，谎言和统计：腐败与大流行

经过：叙利亚Buguzi，，，，Fiona Broom, Joel Adriano, Aleida Rueda

From Brazil to the Philippines, secretive governments across the world are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by covering up data and bypassing public procurement rules, undermining trust in health systems, fuelling anti-vaxxers and putting immunisation campaigns at risk.

秘密医疗产品和服务的秘密合同已成为许多国家的规范，而有关COVID-19案件和死亡的数据已被操纵和报告。

Authorities and heads of states have used the pandemic as an opportunity to gut public bodies dedicated to openness and communication, with the worst offenders forming a rogues’ gallery of coronavirus offenders.

在全球南部，对已经挣扎的健康和治理体系的影响可能是灾难性的。

腐败爆发

乔纳森·库欣（Jonathan Cushing）说，这是两个大流行的故事。

“You have COVID-19 and then what we’ve seen over the past year is this lack of transparency — the utilisation of direct procurement legislation because of the emergency needs at the time,” Cushing tellsscidev.net。

“We’ve seen repeated cases of corruption, and that is the second pandemic in many ways.”

库欣（Cushing）说，据报道，据报道，据报道，据报道，“在菲律宾，在乌干达，我们也看到了肯尼亚，拉丁美洲的案件”。

“As the pandemic has progressed, we’ve seen the shift from the rush to buy [personal protective equipment] and ventilators … to the procurement of vaccines,” says Cushing.

“What we’re seeing now is a complete lack of transparency.”

“在当前大流行的情况下，信任是关键。我们需要确保对系统有信任，”

Jonathan Cushing, Transparency International’s global health team

Tanzanian President John Magufuli may have been a victim of his own refusal to acknowledge the presence and seriousness of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

今年6月,Magufuli宣称“日冕疾病e has been eliminated by God”, leaving Tanzania “coronavirus-free”. The government stopped publishing data on case numbers, while disease surveillance and advocacy wound down.

Magufuli’s death — officially from heart problems, but widely believed to be connected with COVID-19 — was announced on 17 March.

坦桑尼亚最大的城市达累斯萨拉姆的居民告诉scidev.net坦桑尼亚政府是否会逆转马格菲利的越来越多的专制政策，仍然有待观察。但是新任总统萨米亚·苏鲁胡·哈桑（Samia Suluhu Hassan）已经标志着与她的前任的偏离，承诺成立了Covid-19的科学咨询委员会。

流行病学家说，统计数据将是任何新的循证反应的核心。目前，随着人们继续生病，数据赤字仍然存在。

“What’s lacking now in Tanzania is an enabling environment that allows scientific enquiries on such things as pandemics,” says Frank Minja, a Tanzanian doctor and associate professor of neuroradiology at the Yale School of Medicine’s radiology and biomedical imaging department, in the US.

“Of course, science doesn’t work in isolation, it needs economic and political decisions. But science is a tool that should be used to solve our problems.”

Data in the dark

对于发布统计数据的国家，其中许多已被按摩以揭示现实的玫瑰色版本。

数据操作是一个关键的标志COVID-19 corruption, according to Transparency International. This can have devastating consequences, such as resources misallocation, spikes in case rates as citizens are encouraged to carry on as normal, and increased mistrust in governments when reality does not match with the official version of events.

多项研究，包括基于人口率的研究COVID-19 antibodies，建议SARS-COV-2在许多国家比官方统计数据更为普遍。

One such study, carried out in Zambia and published in这BMJ，观察到的“ Covid-19死亡率令人惊讶的高流行率”。

该研究团队由劳伦斯·姆瓦纳尼达（Lawrence Mwananyanda）从事护理权与照料，他说：“与19岁的普遍叙述相矛盾，Covid-19在赞比亚产生了巨大影响。低测试率很大程度上解释了这一点，而不是通过19.Covid-19的较低患病率来解释。

“If our data are generalisable to other settings in Africa, the answer to the question, ‘Why did COVID-19 skip Africa?’ is that it didn’t.”

Inresponse，，，，pathologists from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Zambia’s University Teaching Hospital said the conclusions from the Lusaka study were “highly questionable” and could not be extrapolated to all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers in India found that COVID-19 infections had been严重低估了and could be up to 95 times higher than the official numbers. Health and development economist Anup Malani toldscidev.netthat the high seroprevalence — the number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 — in the rural areas studied was due to mass migration from the cities to escape lockdown restrictions.

In Brazil, the country’s health ministry removed cumulative COVID-19 data from its website in June as President Jair Bolsonarodeclared that the statistics没有“反映该国进入的那一刻”。

这supreme court ordered that the data be restored, and thefigures now indicatethat Brazil is among the worst affected countries in the world, as the government appoints its fourth health minister since the pandemic began.

攻击使者

Those who refuse to toe government lines have faced repercussions, from losing their jobs to legal intimidation and verbal attacks.

After she criticised Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his government over its handling of the COVID-19 crisis, a barrage of online abuse was directed at Maria Ressa, the founder of the Philippines-based news siteRappler。

雷萨（Ressa）是杜特尔特（Duterte）直言不讳的评论家，但国际记者中心（ICFJ）的分析表明，滥用Ressa的第二高升高与她对COVID-19数据的正式报告有关的质疑。

“ Ressa生活在21世纪风暴的核心。”那个报告，由ICFJ全球研究总监Julie Posetti领导。“这是虚假信息和攻击的愤怒 - 可靠的记者受到无罪惩罚的在线暴力行为；事实陷入困境和民主国家。”

Posetti says that state threats and digital violence put journalists — and journalism — at risk in the real world. In January, the tenth arrest warrant was issued against Ressa, who is facing multiple libel proceedings, on top of a six-year jail term, which Ressa is appealing.

Anthony Leachon, a leading physician and public health expert in the Philippines, was forced to quit as a special adviser on the COVID-19 taskforce in June after he publicly disagreed with the Duterte administration’s handling of the pandemic, and argued that the taskforce had succumbed to political pressure.

Leachon also criticised the health department, saying its reporting of COVID-19 was unreliable and delayed, and questioned why the government was favouring vaccines from companies with no safety and efficacy data. The Philippines government has approved the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines for people aged under 65.

Leachon has continued to call on authorities to release real-time data on COVID-19 infections, which he said will allow local officials to quickly respond with appropriate policies.

For speaking independently, Leachon has been ridiculed and mocked by Duterte supporters. The administration’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said that Duterte repeatedly cursed Leachon during a December cabinet meeting on COVID-19.

“This lack of transparency and urgency is the reason why the Philippines is in a mess right now and has fallen behind its peers in the region,” Leachon tellsscidev.net。

“我们处于世界上最长的连续锁定状态。我们仍在隔离区，但现在我们正在看到案件的激增……[而且]我们仍在有关采购疫苗，如何以及什么选择指南的辩论中。”

In March, the Philippines received its first delivery of vaccines from the COVAX facility — the international partnership established to support vaccine access for low- and middle-income countries. Leachon warns that the lack of openness and transparency in the country risks undermining confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.

Captive information

Attacks on Mexico’s independent freedom of information body — the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) — intensified with the onset of the pandemic.

In 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first year in office, INAI reported that the administration was在法律上具有挑战性at least 30 information requests that the institute had approved.

In January, López Obrador announced a proposal to shut down INAI and replace it with a government agency, a move that Human Rights Watch Americas director José Miguel Vivanco called “the perfect recipe for secrecy and abuse”.

“The INAI has played a crucial role in protecting privacy and ensuring the public can access information about government corruption and human rights violations,” Vivanco said.

珍妮特·奥罗佩扎·英格（Janet Oropeza Eng）是民间社会组织基金会的一名责任和反腐败研究人员，他说，Inai对于过去十年来监测联邦政府机构的努力至关重要。

“也许这不是COVID-19,但政府把握现在ld come out and explain what’s causing these deaths. We don’t have the freedom or the facts to say if it is COVID-19.”

阿道夫·姆科诺（Adolf Mkono），居民在坦桑尼亚卡格拉地区

“If INAI disappears or becomes dependent on the executive [branch of government], it would be a regression in terms of independence and autonomy. It is not possible to be both judge and party,” Eng tellsscidev.net。

“The executive could not order itself to open information. For Mexicans, it would be a step backwards in the right to information that was already guaranteed.”

Transparency International’s Mexico branch has made repeated freedom of information requests for pricing transparency, but “gets nowhere”, according to Jonathan Cushing, from the organisation’s global health team.

“And it’s not unique to Mexico, it’s Argentina, in Pakistan they’re trying the same thing. It’s a complete shutdown,” he says.

Gag orders

Cryptic references to ‘pneumonia’ became one of the only ways Tanzanians could talk openly about the disease outbreak, after the government passed a regulation prohibiting reporting on COVID-19.

Under theonline content regulation，，，，publishing “public information that may cause public havoc and disorder” is banned, including “content with information with regards to the outbreak of a deadly or contagious diseases [sic] in the country or elsewhere without the approval of the respective authorities”.

Breaches could be met with imprisonment for a minimum of 12 months, a fine of at least five million shillings (US$2155), or both.

坦桑尼亚北部Kagera地区的居民阿道夫·姆科诺（Adolf Mkono）与布隆迪（Burundi），卢旺达（Rwanda），乌干达（Uganda）和维多利亚湖（Lake Victoria）接壤，他说，害怕受到新规定被指控的恐惧正在扼杀信息共享。

“Since the end of last year, I have witnessed a number of people dying after complaining of difficulty in breathing. This isn’t normal,” says Mkono

“也许这不是COVID-19,但政府把握现在ld come out and explain what’s causing these deaths. We don’t have the freedom or the facts to say if it is COVID-19,” Mkono tells SciDev.Net in an interview conducted in January this year, before the decision by Tanzania’s new President Samia Suluhu Hassan to form a scientific advisory committee on COVID-19. *

Tanzania’s health ministry did not directly respond to these claims whenscidev.netsought comment. But, the head of communications shared a video of the ministry’s principal secretary, Mabula Mchembe, saying: “It is not true that every patient who complains of breathing difficulties should be believed to have COVID-19. I have visited many hospitals and what I can conclude is that the COVID-19 situation being talked about is based on social media claims that aren’t true.”

Procurement behind closed doors

COVID-19 vaccine producers have required governments around the world to sign non-disclosure agreements to keep the price per dose a secret.

联合国毒品和犯罪办公室在一个January policy paper。

“There can be a lack of transparency, and thus a potential risk of corruption in what these agreements entail.”

鉴于紧急采购程序和疫苗谈判隐藏在公众视野中，卫生系统的腐败可能会对疾病遏制具有迅速而毁灭性的连锁效应。

3月27日，墨西哥政府quietly revised its official COVID-19 statistics，，，，acknowledging that the true death toll may be 60 per cent higher than previously reported.

这country went from being称赞by the Pan-American Health Organization for its initial response to the pandemic, to being ranked among theworst performing countries在世界上，随着案件和死亡的攀升。

In April 2020 the government issued an open-ended decree authorising the purchase of coronavirus-related goods and services without the need to carry out the public bidding process.

这result, according to the data analysis project Covid Purchases (comprascovid.mx）由人权非政府组织Poder和数据新闻倡议Serendipia，墨西哥在2020年的采购合同中有近95％是直接奖励合同 - 也就是说，无竞争而授予。

This compares with 2019, when about 78 per cent of public contracts were direct awards, according to civil society organisation Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.

And concerns have been raised about the suitability of companies awarded tenders, with many lacking experience in the medical fields or linked to previous corruption cases.

“令人担忧的问题是，所有级别的政府 - 不仅联邦政府都在滥用紧急法令，继续进行直接奖励，而无需任何限制，”透明国际国际分支机构墨西哥透明度分支机构的主任爱德华多·波霍尔克斯（EduardoBohórquez）告诉scidev.net。

Comprascovid.mx收集的数据表明，政府机构为重要的个人防护设备（例如面罩）支付了截然不同的价格。

While some government departments paid one Mexican peso — about five US cents — per mask, others paid up to 405 pesos — almost US$20.

Bohórquez says that without a sunset clause in the emergency procurement legislation, Mexico’s public funds and institutions are left vulnerable to corruption.

出售疫苗

While there are reports of private vaccine holidays to the United Arab Emirates up for grabs, Pakistan is believed to be the first country to have approved the private import and commercial sale of COVID-19 vaccines.

Transparency advocates have urged the government to abandon the proposal, which would allow Sputnik-V vaccines to be sold at a price around 160 per cent higher than the global set price of US$10 per dose.

This would “provide a window of corruption”, as it could mean government vaccines end up in private hospitals for commercial sale and price gouging in the public sector, said Nasira Iqbal, former justice of the Lahore High Court and vice-chair of Transparency International Pakistan, in a给总理的信。

“The government should not encourage such a policy of favouring a certain section of the society at the cost of transparency,” Iqbal继续说。

作为回应，国家卫生服务部法规和协调部秘书Aamir Ashraf Khawaja表示，私人疫苗销售只是政府COVID-19的回应的一个要素。

“这是一个被认为是联邦的决定government to allow private sector to import vaccine as the national vaccination priorities favoured the healthcare workers and the elderly, involving some lag in reaching other segments of the society,”Khawaja said in a letter。

“可以补充的是，政府正在确定最高零售价，为竞争和自由市场动态留出空间。”

分析师说，当局和私营药公司之间的潜在利益冲突为腐败留下了机会。

scidev.netcontacted the Pakistan government’s Press Information Department for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

一位总部位于巴基斯坦scidev.netthat that while there were few confirmed reports of coronavirus corruption in Pakistan, rumours abound in a country known for its systemic and endemic corruption.

经济学家说：“在政策方面，有传言说，购买呼吸机以及在旁遮普省的抑制案件和死亡数据中，有传言称该病毒的发病率很低。”

“On the health front, there has been a lot of scepticism on testing for COVID-19. It is again rumoured that for travel purposes, private labs were on purpose providing negative results. This was mainly done for international travel. There was no monitoring, either by the press or by NGOs.”

Additionally, analysts say that theUS$1.386 billion2020年4月，根据国际货币基金组织快速融资工具，保证向巴基斯坦保证，尚未完全发放。

Open science, open societies

这first casualty of coronavirus corruption could well be public trust, says Cushing, as skewed statistics and bent procurement processes give vaccine sceptics ammunition that could hamper responses to the pandemic.

“在当前大流行的情况下，信任是关键。我们需要确保对系统有信任，”Cushing said.

“Part of transparency is about stopping the corruption, stopping those individuals making profit illegally and immorally from this.

“But it’s also about letting people understand and participate in decision making. If you know what’s going on and you can understand what decisions are being taken and can help shape that, it makes it much easier to hold governments accountable.”

这consequences for societies could reach beyond the immediate disease threat. Without open data and open science, communities will be left out of important conversations and in the dark, says Cushing.

卫生机构需要数据来支持“优先购买哪些药物”时支持“理性决策”。库欣说：“如果那不存在，那么充其量就可以浪费钱，最糟糕的是，这可能会影响健康成果。”

“治理与健康社会之间的联系正是 - 您想要透明的治理体系，它们越透明，更多的人可以参与其中，对该系统的信任就会越来越多。

“That should allow that conversation to happen about where the country goes in terms of health, development, socioeconomic priorities.”

• 这篇文章于4月7日更新，以表明阿道夫·姆科诺（Adolf Mkono）在1月发表讲话，然后坦桑尼亚新任总统萨米亚·苏鲁胡·哈桑（Samia Suluhu Hassan）决定成立了Covid-19的科学咨询委员会。