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An independent panel appointed by the World Health Organization to review its coordination of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic will have full access to any internal U.N. agency documents, materials and emails necessary, the panel said Thursday as it begins the probe. The panel’s co-chairs, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, announced the 11 other members during a media briefing. They include Dr. Joanne Liu, who was an outspoken WHO critic while leading Medecins Sans Frontieres during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. (Cheng, 9/3)

“We intend to learn all that we can about (the pandemic’s) early emergence, global spread, health, economic and social impacts, and how it has been controlled and mitigated,” Clark said in a statement. ... The panel is to meet about every six weeks starting this month through to April and will make a presentation to the WHO’s executive board in October, it said. (9/3)

The global COVID-19 total today topped 26 million, as the leaders of independent group reviewing the world's response announced the members of an 11-person panel and Sanofi and GSK announced the launch of the first human trial of its recombinant vaccine against the virus. In recent weeks, India has led the world with the most daily cases, and over the past day it reported a new daily high of 83,883 new cases. The country will soon pass Brazil to become the country with the second highest number of cases. The global total today reached 26,128,340 new cases and 865,132 people have died from their infections, according to the Johns Hopkins online dashboard. (Schnirring, 9/3)