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WHO Expert Panel Formulates Recommendations To Curb Current Pandemic And Avert A Future Pandemic Catastrophe

The WHO’s Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response issued two sets of recommendations in May designed 1) to lessen the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic and 2) to create a truly international system that can effectively prevent any future outbreaks from escalating into pandemics. The panel of 11 experts, described as highly experienced, skilled, and diverse, worked for eight months to provide a definitive account of what happened and why it happened and analyzed how a future pandemic can be prevented. To read an account of the panel’s diagnosis of how the world allowed the current pandemic to unfold, see the related article in this issue.

To curtail the current pandemic, the panel calls for:

1. One billion vaccine doses from high income countries to low to middle income countries by September of this year and another billion doses by mid-2022.

2. Vaccine producing countries should agree to voluntary licensing and technology transfer for COVID-19 vaccines.

3. G7 countries should commit to provide 60% of the US$19 billion required for The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) collaboration in 2021 for vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

4. Every country should apply non-pharmaceutical public health measures systematically and rigorously.

5. WHO should develop a plan with clear goals, targets, and milestones to guide and monitor bringing the COVID-19 pandemic to an end.

To prevent a future pandemic and create a new international system, the Independent Panel crafted the following recommendations. Each of these recommendations is tied to the evidence the panel found for the failings in response to the current pandemic. The new recommendations should be implemented as a package to assure they create the new system needed.

According to its report, the Panel “has assessed the set of recommendations against one criterion only: if they had been in place, would they have stopped the COVID-19 pandemic? We believe the answer is yes, and therefore urge their implementation as a whole and in a timely manner.”

1. Elevate pandemic preparedness and response to the highest level of political leadership.

The idea behind this recommendation is to gain the attention of the leaders of each country and get them to commit to transforming pandemic preparedness and response from its current inadequate to a future adequate level. The recommendation calls for the creation of a Council of Leaders which would adopt a political declaration at a special session of the UN General Assembly in 2021.

2. Strengthen the independence, authority, and financing of WHO.

3. Invest in preparedness now to prevent the next crisis

This the panel seeks to accomplish in part by having all national governments update their pandemic preparedness plans and have them peer reviewed at regular intervals.

4. Create a new agile and rapid surveillance information and alert system.

5. Establish a pre-negotiated platform for tools and supplies.

6. Raise new international financing for pandemic preparedness and response.

7. National pandemic coordinators should have a direct line to Head of State or Government

 

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