A somber warning in pandemic report
No country can afford to wait until the global pandemic has ended before determining the proper lessons to be learned. The stakes are too high. That is why a UK parliamentary select committee report into the coronavirus published on Oct. 12 received so much attention. The findings are stark, describing it as Britain’s worst-ever public health failure, with more than 138,000 deaths. The report should be read far and wide.
First, the pandemic — which has killed 5 million people worldwide, according to official figures, but maybe as many as 10 million — is clearly not over. New vaccinebusting variants may hit us. Preparedness for additional waves is vital.
Second, most states have accepted that COVID-19 is here to stay. The challenge will be how to manage it with vaccines, antivirals, pills and various treatments, and to ensure that poorer nations get the best protection as well.
Finally, given the way humanity lives, the ecosystems we have disrupted, and our overcrowded and interconnected way of life in the 21st century, novel pathogens are likely to challenge us on an ever more frequent basis. We shall face more pandemics.
Britain is a rich case study for those wishing to learn lessons. It still has the fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world after the US, India and Brazil. A wealthy economy with a strong scientific base, it was one of the first to develop a COVID-19 test, introduced in January 2020. It had the resources, financial and human, to face the disease, and was widely considered, along with the US, to be one of the countries most prepared to face a pandemic. So why was the UK hit so hard in 2020? UK preparedness was based on the belief that it would be an influenzalike pandemic. There was a bias toward flu as opposed to novel and zoonotic-type diseases. The trouble was that COVID-19 had asymptomatic transmission. This placed great onus on testing. Sadly, the UK and others failed to take note of how countries such as South Korea, when faced with the SARS outbreak, had reformulated their preparations and, as a result, handled the coronavirus pandemic with considerably greater success.
A former chief medical officer for England was damning in her assessment. “Our infectious disease experts really did not believe that SARS, or another SARS, would get from Asia to us. It is a form of British exceptionalism.” Many were guilty of lazy groupthink.
Such a report will not and should not be the final word on the handling of the pandemic. It must be part of a process that sees other countries and international bodies doing likewise, and corralling their data and lessons to ensure that all of us are better prepared next time so that the efforts are anticipatory, not reactive. Our readiness must be tip-top.
The UK report examined how just one state fared, but few countries responded perfectly. One of the telling criticisms was that insufficient attention was paid in Britain to international findings about the virus. Tragically, countries and international bodies failed to work closely enough together.