The World Health Organization has launched a damning report into the origins of COVID-19, finding the pandemic was completely preventable.
The report, commissioned by WHO, was written by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. It was co-chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.
Here are the five key findings.
The world was woefully unprepared
SARS, HIV, ebola, zika — large-scale infectious diseases are not new. Despite previous outbreaks and global scares, countries have been reluctant to invest in pandemic preparedness despite “clear evidence” doing so saves billions of dollars when outbreaks hit.
“Although public health officials, infectious disease experts and previous international commissions and reviews had warned of potential pandemics and urged robust preparations since the first outbreak of SARS, COVID-19 still took large parts of the world by surprise,” the report said.
WHO was a week late sounding the alarm
The WHO emergency committee met to discuss the Wuhan outbreak on January 22 and 23 but was split on whether declare it a public health emergency of international concern — the loudest alarm WHO can send.
The panel found that alarm should have been called then and there but the committee waited until January 30 after the director-general returned from a mission to China.
The alarm meant little to many
February was a “lost” month, largely because many countries seemed to not understand the seriousness of the public health emergency of international concern. COVID-19 didn’t yet meet the criteria for a pandemic, and without that phrasing many countries didn’t react to WHO’s declaration. The report recommended there be a new definition for a suspected outbreak with pandemic potential.
There was “delay, hesitation, and denial” and surveillance and alert systems at national, regional and global levels must be redesigned to ensure potential outbreaks are picked up much faster.
“[Countries] did not sufficiently appreciate the threat and know how to respond,” the report said.
“In the absence of certainty about how serious the consequences of this new pathogen would be, ‘wait and see’ seemed a less costly and less consequential choice than concerted public health action.”
There are limited medical supply stockpiles
When COVID cases started ramping up, its spread could have been slowed down had the world had stockpiles of personal protective equipment and medical equipment.
In early February 2020 the WHO warned of delays of up to six months in the supply of face masks and protective suits, and by March the shortfall between needs and manufacturing capacity was estimated at 40%. Supply chains were also overly dependent on a few manufacturers concentrated in a few countries.
There has been a long-running critical gap is in oxygen supplies across the world which could have brought down the death toll.
Vaccine nationalism is a concern
Australia got one mention in the report over our vaccine deals, though it’s not a positive one. With Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the European Union we have secured enough vaccine doses to cover 200% of our population (although many of these doses don’t arrive until the end of this year).
The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX) has not been able to secure as many doses as hoped, and the report found there needs to be an immediate political agreement for sharing and redistributing available doses based on what is best from a global public health perspective.
Then there’s that “Economy Before Health” attitude of too many governments?
Thank you for the summary, Amber. I think that most criticisms are fair, but would make the following points.
Unfortunately, under-insuring very rare events can makes a kind of short-term sense to governments looking for ways to turn taxation into votes. I’d interpret our lack of PPE etc… in that category.
By the same token, over-buying vaccine doses at 2:1 hedges against wastage, logistical problems and issues detected post-market (like the AZ blood-clots.) It can be presented as due diligence, and if the only thing making it look like vaccine nationalism is global undersupply then which multilateral authority gets to prescribe the ‘correct’ way to select, acquire and distribute vaccines?
I’d suggest that the root issue is production deficits, rather than acquisition: those countries that can buy adequate surpluses early need to invest even more heavily in production.
In hindsight, the early stages were handled as you would expect by humanity. Reasonably well, in fact. People did as good as they could within their systems. However, there have been many crazy decisions in a few countries since then. The UK, Brazil, USA. Maybe India now, but it’s hard to see what they could have done to avert their disaster, public health there never being great.
All the problems have arisen when politicians have ignored science. Politicians, totally ignorant of science and basic mathematics, and having never studied pandemics, public health or anything else relevent to the issues, have over-ruled all the experts, spun and bullshitted their way along (which of course is what they do all the time so how could we expect anything different?).
So the main lesson to be learnt from this pandemic is, next time, Listen To The Experts. The PM on TV telling me all about it is just simply crap. Ditto the public health officers whose hands are tied – crap. Not to be trusted.
Anyone with a vested business interest, in their ignorance or greed, give them zero air-time. Bolsinaro, Johnstone, Trump – lock them up for the duration, they’ve killed untold people. Idiots.
All the minor outbreaks in Australia were caused by ignorance and penny pinching, all easily knocked on the head in the PLAN for next time. Luckily the PM wasn’t allowed to open state borders. Most of our minor outbreaks have been caused by the complete absence of quarantine, thanks to the ignorance of the Federal government which is, front and centre, responsible. In actual fact, the PM should resign over this. If he can’t keep our safety in mind then he doesn’t deserve the job. All he’s come up with in the last year is a bunch of diversions hoping nobody notices his abysmal performance.
The severity of the pandemic, whether here or in India, is as nothing compared with the looming global disaster which is climate change. Again, where is our government on this? Giving our money to gas and coal to make things worse, is where. Taking bribes. It’s enough to make you sick.
Well put.
Underpinned by deep seated libertarian economics that has now infected public sectors, especially US, UK and Australia, that reflect the inventory process of ‘JIT just in time’ widespread in industry; but ignores the social contract.
This translates into lower public investment and maybe lower taxes, but then govt. agencies are unprepared materially and functionally for ‘black swan’ events like pandemic.