The world had a chance to prevent the pandemic, but it exploded

A jury made up of 13 independent experts responsible for assessing the global response to the crisis said the Covid-19 pandemic could have been avoided.

Their report, published on 12 May and mandated by the WHO, repeatedly warned world leaders that they had not been warned, that they had lost time, had to store information and provide it with despair and had not taken the crisis seriously. While some countries took aggressive steps to reduce the spread of the virus, “many countries, including some of the richest, made science more expensive, denied the severity of the disease, delayed the response, and eventually sowed mistrust among citizens, literally with deadly consequences.” said Helen Clark, chair of the Independent Pandemic Preparedness and Response Panel and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, on Wednesday.

Report –COVID-19: Becoming the Last Pandemic – it examines why we did not stop the spread of coronavirus, and looks to the future, highlighting strategies to end the current crisis and prevent future ones.

Here are five key purchases:

1. We had a chance to prevent disaster in early 2020, and we wasted it. “The combination of poor strategic options, unwillingness to deal with inequality and an uncoordinated system created a toxic cocktail that led to the pandemic becoming a catastrophic human crisis,” the authors wrote.
2. The supply of vaccines should be encouraged and the shots redistributed. The report calls on rich countries to provide a billion doses of vaccine to low- and middle-income countries by September 2021 and another billion by mid-next year. It also encourages vaccine producers to offer licensing and technology transfer agreements. If these agreements are not reached within three months, it requires an automatic waiver to start production where the films are needed.
3. The World Health Organization needs more power and money. The WHO should have the authority in the short term to investigate pandemic pathogens in any country without publishing national information without the approval of national governments.
4. A new organization is needed to support the WHO. The report calls for the formation of a Council of World Health Threats composed of heads of state to ensure that countries are not compromised in their preparations for the pandemic and that the country is held accountable.
5. The impact of the pandemic on almost every aspect of daily life is excessive. More than 3 million people have died as a result of covid-19, including at least 17,000 health workers. The crisis provided “the deepest shock to the global economy since World War II and the greatest simultaneous contraction of national economies since the Great Depression,” the panel wrote, adding that the crisis has pushed more than 100 million people into extreme poverty. “, they added.