UN: World unprepared for Covid-19
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said mankind was “so unprepared” for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) while pointing out that there was not enough humility, unity or solidarity in the world.
He earlier brought together the principals of 31 UN system entities in a virtual meeting of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), the longeststanding and highest-level coordination forum of the UN system.
As CEB head, the secretary-general gave an overview of the state of the world, reflecting on the future of multilateralism beyond the immediate response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as on the risks brought by the current crisis for human rights, global governance, ethics and international cooperation.
“What is clear today is the fragility of humankind and the planet. With all the scientific progress we still don’t know how to deal with a virus, we are so unprepared. It is clear there is not enough humility, unity and not enough solidarity in the world,” Guterres said.
With this in mind, the secretarygeneral brought to the board’s attention the UN policy briefs on the effects of Covid-19, released over the past several weeks, as strengthening the fundamental role of the UN as a global platform.
Board members David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned of negative global economic repercussions of Covid- 19, with incoming data projecting more adverse scenarios than only four weeks ago, including a high risk of increase in poverty and inequality.
Malpass reiterated the call for a debt moratorium for developing countries and underlined the importance of having a human focus during the recovery. “We need to open the economy in a way that people can rise beyond poverty.”
Georgieva, while mentioning the different risks associated with the pandemic, also reflected on some opportunities such as “leapfrogging to a digital world after the crisis” and focusing on low carbon climate resilience.
Recognizing the necessity of a human- centered recovery, CEB principals rallied behind the secretary-general’s call to action on human rights and related policy brief on “Covid-19 and human rights” and emphasized that responses, which respect and are shaped by human rights, result in better outcomes in beating the pandemic.
CEB members considered the challenges of financing the Covid-19 response while keeping up the pace of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
They joined the UN secretarygeneral’s call for bold climate action to be embedded into all aspects of economic recovery, with recovery packages delivering green jobs and driving sustainable growth.
The board also focused on data as a strategic asset to inform the post-pandemic recovery. The “Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere: With Insight, Impact and Integrity” was introduced as an overarching reference for data-driven leadership.
Meanwhile, the new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) modelling study that says nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected.
Authors of the research, published Friday in the journal
predicted a lower infection rate than in other parts of the world like Europe and the US, with fewer severe cases and deaths.
But while they said many African nations had been swift to adopt containment measures, they warned that health systems could still quickly become overwhelmed. “Our model points to the scale of the problem for health systems if containment measures fail,” said the authors.
The study comes amid stark warnings that Covid-19 threatens a health emergency in developing nations where fragile health systems are already struggling with an array of other chronic diseases.
Experts at the WHO’s Africa office modelled likely rates of exposure to the virus and infection in the 47 countries under its regional remit, which excludes Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.
Some 231 million people, or 22 percent (with a range of 16 to 26 percent) of the one billion people in the region were expected to be infected in the 12 month period — most of them showing few or no symptoms.
But an estimated 4.6 million people would need to be admitted to hospital, while 140,000 would have severe Covid-19 infection and 89,000 would be critically ill. That would lead to some 150,000 deaths (between 83,000 and 190,000) the study suggested.