The Covid-19 pandemic was a preventable disaster with weak links at every point in the chain of preparedness and response.
That was the summary of findings from a report from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, titled Covid-19: Make it the last pandemic. The report concluded that the alert system was too slow, the World Health Organization (WHO) was underpowered, and global political leadership was absent.
According to an article published by the BMJ on 13th May 202193, the 13-member panel spent eight months reviewing the evidence on the spread, actions, and responses to the pandemic, culminating in the report commissioned by the WHO Director General in May 2020. It described Covid-19 as a terrible wake-up call and “the 21st Century’s Chernobyl moment.” Further still, it damningly says that the system, as it stands now, is unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic.
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