Five years after the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic, which claimed the lives of millions and destroyed the global economy, experts and the World Health Organization believe that the world is still not ready to face another pandemic, despite being better prepared.
What does the World Health Organization think?
Is the world better prepared? “The answer is yes and no,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, which has been at the heart of the battle to combat Covid-19.
“If a new pandemic occurred today, the world would face the same vulnerabilities,” he said.
“But the world also learned painful lessons from the pandemic and took important steps to strengthen its defenses,” he added.
According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the American epidemiologist who heads the Department of Prevention and Preparedness for Epidemics and Pandemics at the World Health Organization, “Many things have improved thanks to the 2009 influenza pandemic (H1N1) and also thanks to Covid.”
“But I believe that the world is not ready to face another pandemic or a mass epidemic,” she added.
The world is not ready
The WHO’s Independent Expert Group on Epidemic Preparedness and Response puts it bluntly: “In 2025, the world will not be prepared to combat a new pandemic threat,” due to the inequalities that persist in access to financing and tools to combat pandemics such as vaccines.
Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans explained to Agence France-Presse that the success and speed of production of vaccines based on messenger RNA technology could “change the rules of the game” during the next global health crisis.
But she is concerned that using it to combat a future threat will face “huge problems”, especially due to the “huge” level of misinformation.
Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, said that the possibility of an H5N1 bird flu pandemic should be taken “seriously.” Currently, the virus is not transmitted between humans but is widespread in many animal species.
“I don’t think we are more prepared than we were with the Covid epidemic,” Meg Schaefer, an epidemiologist at the American SAS Institute, told Agence France-Presse.
She believes that we will need another 4 to 5 years for public health authorities to be able to monitor and share information more quickly.
But she “trusts” the lessons the world learned during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic regarding protection, such as social distancing and wearing a mask.
Concrete steps and alarm level
A new WHO Center for Epidemic Prevention opened in 2021 in Berlin, dedicated to gathering information to better detect and mitigate threats.
The World Bank’s Pandemic Fund, which was established in 2022, has so far approved financing worth $885 million, allocated to about 50 projects covering 75 countries.
A technology transfer center for the development of mRNA vaccines was opened in South Africa in 2023 with special support from the World Health Organization, as well as in 2022 a global training center for biomanufacturing in South Korea to stimulate the production of the local pharmaceutical company.
On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of global proportions, the highest alert level but with highly bureaucratic arrangements.
Most countries and people did not act until the head of the World Health Organization used the term “pandemic” for the first time on March 11, 2020.
To stimulate more effective international cooperation, WHO member countries agreed on the concept of a “pandemic emergency” which is now the highest global alert level.
treaty
In December 2021, WHO Member States decided to develop a convention on epidemic prevention and preparedness to avoid serious mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But key questions remain unanswered, including the issue of sharing data on emerging pathogens and the benefits resulting from them, namely vaccines, tests, treatments, as well as epidemic surveillance.
The negotiators set May 2025 as the deadline for reaching a consensus.
Also, more than 200 scientists from more than 50 countries evaluated data on 1,652 pathogens – most of them viruses – allowing the World Health Organization to compile a list this year of about 30 pathogens that may cause future epidemics, such as Covid-19, Lassa fever and Ebola viruses. Zika and Marburg.