The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has, since December 2019, claimed over 3.3 million lives across the world, with several countries, including India, continuing to struggle to contain its spread.
But the chaos borne out of the COVID-19 outbreak could have been avoided if the international system hadn’t ignored the warnings and taken measures to prevent an escalation of the crisis, found an independent global panel.
In its report, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) said, “it is clear to the Panel that the world was not prepared and had ignored warnings which resulted in a massive failure: an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 became a devastating pandemic.”
The panel, which has spent the last 8 months examining the circumstances around which COVID-19 originated, spread across the world, and the regional and national responses taken, arrived at one particularly stark conclusion. In reconstructing the events that transpired during the early months of the outbreak, it came to regard February 2020 as a “lost month, when steps could and should have been taken to curtail the epidemic and forestall the pandemic.”
Without attributing blame to any single nation or agency, it drew specific attention to the 2005 International Health Regulations which detail the legally binding rights and responsibilities of the WHO’s member states in evaluating risk and responding to public health emergencies. It notes that the current system is structured such that “steps may only be taken if the weight of evidence requires them,” adding that a revision premised on a “precautionary principle,” especially with regard to respiratory infections, ought to be implemented.
For instance, it alleged that the outbreak in Wuhan, China had met all the conditions to be classified as a “public health emergency of international concern,” by January 22, 2020, and lamented the seven-day delay of the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on COVID-19 in doing so.
Moreover, despite sounding what amounted to the WHO’s loudest alarm, the report notes that “forceful and immediate emergency responses in most countries” only materialised in March once reports of international transmission and overburdened hospitals surfaced.
The report also makes a slew of recommendations, the most significant of which is the establishment of a global threats council capable of holding countries accountable and a disease surveillance mechanism imbued with the authority to communicate information without the approval of relevant countries. Moreover, it also calls for high-income G7 nations to immediately commit $1.9 billion to the WHO’s Covax facility aimed at providing vaccines and other resources to low-income nations.
To prevent future outbreaks, the report also calls for the formation of an International Pandemic Financing Facility “to mobilise long-term (10-15 year) contributions of approximately US$5-10 billion per annum to finance preparedness.”
“This facility should have the ability to disburse up to $50-100 billion at short notice in the event of a crisis. Use existing global and regional organisations, based on an ability-to-pay formula adopted whereby larger and wealthier economies will pay the most, preferably from non-overseas development assistance budget lines and additional to established overseas development assistance budget levels,” it adds.
