Clark’s panel critical of WHO, China’s early response
An independent panel set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has criticised China’s early handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, while praising countries that took strict public health control measures against the virus.
In its second report on progress, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which is co-chaired by former Prime Minister Helen Clark, also suggested the WHO could have moved more quickly early in the pandemic.
The report expressed regret at the unequal distribution of Covid19 vaccines.
‘‘Whether you happen to be born in Liberia, or New Zealand, or anywhere else, should not be the factor that determines your place in the vaccine queue,’’ the report said.
Separately, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reported that while 39 million vaccine doses had been administered in nearly 50 richer countries, only 25 have been given in one low-income nation. ‘‘I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,’’ he said.
In its report, the panel said the evidence of deficiencies in pandemic preparedness and response called for farreaching change.
Critical elements of the global pandemic alert system were slow, cumbersome and indecisive.
Previous pandemic crises had prompted numerous evaluations, panels and commissions which had issued many recommendations for strengthening preparedness and response, the panel said.
‘‘Too many of those were not acted on. There has been a wholesale failure to take seriously the existential risk posed by pandemic threat to humanity and its place in the future of the planet. The collective reaction has amounted to wishful thinking instead of farsighted risk assessment and action.’’ Opportunities were lost to apply basic public health measures early in the pandemic. ‘‘... public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January (2020),’’ the panel said. The first known cluster of cases of what was then described as pneumonia of unknown cause was identified in Wuhan, China in late December 2019, leading to the identification of the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus as the cause.
There was also evidence of cases in some other countries by the end of January 2020, the panel said.
Public health containment measures should have been implemented immediately in those countries, but only a minority of nations responded to evidence of an emerging epidemic.
It was too early to make a judgment about the exercise by WHO of its various functions in pandemic preparedness and response, but it was clear the world was more reliant on an effective WHO than ever before in the organisation’s history, the panel said.