But WHO's emergency committee should have declared an international health emergency at its first meeting on Jan. 22 instead of waiting until Jan. 30, the report said. That committee did not recommend travel restrictions due to WHO's International Health Regulations, which need revamping, it said. If travel restrictions had been imposed more quickly, more widely, again that would have been a serious inhibition on the rapid transmission of the disease and that remains the same today, Clark said. 'Steps could and should have been taken' Governments failed to grasp that the emergency declaration was WHO's loudest possible alarm and that it has no authority to declare a pandemic, although it eventually described it that way on March 11, the report said.