The Covid-19 pandemic was preventable, according to a group of independent experts

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In a report entitled “Covid-19: Make It The Last Pandemic” The WHO said it should have declared a global emergency earlier than it did, adding that in addition to urgent change, the world is also vulnerable to major outbreaks of other diseases.

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More than 3.3 million people worldwide have died so far from the Covid-19 virus. The study by an independent task force aimed to find answers to how the virus could infect more than 159 million people and kill 3.3 million.

“The situation we are in today could have been remedied,” the group’s co-chair, Elena Johnson Sirleff, former Liberian president, told reporters. “It is associated with countless failures, gaps and delays in preparedness and response.”

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The panel says the WHO Emergency Committee should have declared the outbreak in China an international emergency a week earlier, at its first meeting on 22 January 2020, instead of 30 January.

Another month was lost because most countries did not take appropriate measures to stop the virus from spreading.

The WHO was then thwarted by the same legislation that travel restrictions should be imposed as a last resort, the commission said, noting that Europe and the US were late for the whole of February, acting only when hospitals started filling up with Covid-19 patients.

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While the United States and Europe are beginning to ease restrictions during the pandemic, the virus continues to have a devastating effect on parts of Asia. The situation is particularly severe in India, where hospitals face a lack of oxygen. There has also been an outbreak of Covid-19 in India’s neighboring countries, such as Nepal.

To prevent a repeat catastrophic pandemic, the report proposes key reforms:

A new Global Threat Council should be set up with the power to hold states accountable;
A disease surveillance system should be set up so that information can be published without national approval;
Vaccines should be classified as public goods and a pandemic financing mechanism should be set up;
Wealthy G7 countries must immediately call for $ 1.9 billion for the WHO’s Covax program, which provides vaccine support to low-income countries.

Helen Clark, co-chair of the expert group and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, said it was very important for the WHO to have a broad mandate. “If travel restrictions were imposed sooner, more widely, the rapid transmission of the disease would be significantly delayed,” she added.