WORLD COULD HAVE PREVENTED PANDEMIC – EXPERT PANEL

THE catastrophic scale of the Covid-19 pandemic could have been prevented, an independent global panel concluded on Wednesday, but a “toxic cocktail” of dithering and poor coordination meant the warning signs went unheeded.

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) said a series of bad decisions meant Covid-19 went on to kill at least 3.3 million people so far and devastate the global economy.

Institutions “failed to protect people” and science-denying leaders eroded public trust in health interventions, the IPPPR said in its long-awaited final report.

Early responses to the outbreak detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 “lacked urgency,” with February 2020 a costly “lost month” as countries failed to heed the alarm, said the panel.

To tackle the current pandemic, it called on the richest countries to donate a billion vaccine doses to the poorest. It also called on the world’s wealthiest nations to fund new organizations dedicated to preparing for the next pandemic.

The report was requested by World Health Organization (WHO) member states last May.

The panel was jointly chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The report, “Covid-19: Make it the Last Pandemic,” argued that the global alarm system needed overhauling to prevent a similar catastrophe.

“The situation we find ourselves in today could have been prevented,” Sirleaf told reporters. “It is due to a myriad of failures, gaps and delays in preparedness and response.”

“Poor strategic choices, unwillingness to tackle inequalities and an uncoordinated system created a toxic cocktail which allowed the pandemic to turn into a catastrophic human crisis,” the report said.

The panel did not spare the WHO, saying it could have declared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern — its highest level of alarm — on Jan. 22, 2020.

Instead, it waited eight more days before doing so.

It was only in March after the WHO described it as a pandemic — a term that is not officially part of its alert system — that countries were jolted into action.

The panel made several recommendations on how to address the current pandemic.

Rich, well-vaccinated countries should provide the 92 poorest territories in the Covax scheme with at least 1 billion vaccine doses by September 1 and more than 2 billion by mid-2022, it said.

The WHO and the World Trade Organization should also get major vaccine-producing countries and manufacturers to agree on voluntary licensing and technology transfers for Covid-19 vaccines, the panel said.

To tackle future outbreaks and pandemics, the panel called for a Global Health Threats Council made up of world leaders, plus a pandemic convention.

The panel also proposed an overhaul of the WHO to give it greater control over its funding and more authority for its leadership.