While India, hit by a new wave of coronavirus is drowning in death, independent experts appointed by the WHO assure that the pandemic could have been avoided. – Aijaz Rahi / AP / SIPA
The kind of news that we enjoy reading after more than a year of deprivation of liberty … “The situation in which we find ourselves today could have been avoided,” said Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of the Council on Wednesday. Liberia and co-chairs of the panel of independent experts commissioned by WHO.
The latter have published a report on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic which has already killed more than 3.3 million people, infected tens of millions of others and devastated the world economy. They denounce a real “Chernobyl of the 21st century” and urgently call for vast reforms of warning and prevention systems.
“Combination of bad strategic choices”
While severe, the report does not point to a single culprit. Unlike former US President Donald Trump, for whom China and the World Health Organization (WHO), whom he considered too much of Beijing’s boot, were solely responsible for the health and economic disaster in which finds itself the world. On the contrary, “this situation is due to a myriad of failures, gaps and delays in the preparation and response” to the pandemic, said Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, at a press conference.
The report also writes: “It is clear that the combination of poor strategic choices, a lack of will to tackle inequalities and a poorly coordinated system created a toxic cocktail that enabled the pandemic to turn into a catastrophic human crisis ”.
Eight months of investigation
Established by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pursuant to a resolution adopted in May 2020 by member states of the organization, the independent panel, made up of 13 experts, has spent the last eight months examining the spread of the pandemic and the measures taken by the health agency and by States to deal with it.
Because since the start of the crisis, the WHO has been criticized for its responses to the crisis, notably delaying in recommending the wearing of a mask. Above all, she was accused by the United States of having been extremely complacent with China, where the coronavirus appeared, and of having delayed declaring a state of global health emergency. China has been accused of trying to cover up the epidemic.
An alarm signal sounded too late
Certainly, “we can say that there have been clear delays in China, but there have been delays everywhere,” commented former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who co-chairs the panel. .
“Too much time has passed”, note the experts, between the notification of an epidemic outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin in the second half of December 2019 and the declaration, on January 30 by the WHO, of a public health emergency of international concern, the highest level of alarm. For experts, this statement could have been made at the first meeting of the WHO emergency committee on January 22.
“The inaction of so many countries” singled out
But even if the WHO would have declared the health emergency a week earlier, things would hardly have changed in the face of “the inaction of so many countries”, admitted Helen Clark. Because it was only on March 11, when Dr Tedros described the situation as a pandemic, that the capitals really took measure of the danger.
In this regard, February 2020 was a “lost month” during which many countries could have taken measures to stem the spread of the virus. Ultimately, “delays, hesitations and denials” allowed the epidemic, then the pandemic to blossom, concludes the report.
“Full transparency” required
The expert group recommends that governments and the international community adopt without delay a set of reforms aimed at transforming the global pandemic preparedness, alert and response system. For this, the report suggests several avenues, including the creation of a World Council to fight against health threats, as well as the establishment of a new global surveillance system based on “total transparency”. This system would give the WHO the power to immediately publish information about epidemics that could lead to a pandemic without seeking approval from countries.
The report also makes a series of recommendations for immediate application to end the spread of the Covid, including calling on rich countries to provide more than two billion doses of vaccine by mid-2022, including at least one billion. here September.