WHO’s damning report: five failures that contributed to the COVID pandemic

The World Health Organization has launched a damning report into the origins of COVID-19, finding the pandemic was completely preventable.

The report, commissioned by WHO, was written by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. It was co-chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

Here are the five key findings.

The world was woefully unprepared

SARS, HIV, ebola, zika — large-scale infectious diseases are not new. Despite previous outbreaks and global scares, countries have been reluctant to invest in pandemic preparedness despite “clear evidence” doing so saves billions of dollars when outbreaks hit.

“Although public health officials, infectious disease experts and previous international commissions and reviews had warned of potential pandemics and urged robust preparations since the first outbreak of SARS, COVID-19 still took large parts of the world by surprise,” the report said.

WHO was a week late sounding the alarm

The WHO emergency committee met to discuss the Wuhan outbreak on January 22 and 23 but was split on whether declare it a public health emergency of international concern — the loudest alarm WHO can send.

The panel found that alarm should have been called then and there but the committee waited until January 30 after the director-general returned from a mission to China.

The alarm meant little to many

February was a “lost” month, largely because many countries seemed to not understand the seriousness of the public health emergency of international concern. COVID-19 didn’t yet meet the criteria for a pandemic, and without that phrasing many countries didn’t react to WHO’s declaration. The report recommended there be a new definition for a suspected outbreak with pandemic potential.

There was “delay, hesitation, and denial” and surveillance and alert systems at national, regional and global levels must be redesigned to ensure potential outbreaks are picked up much faster.

“[Countries] did not sufficiently appreciate the threat and know how to respond,” the report said.

“In the absence of certainty about how serious the consequences of this new pathogen would be, ‘wait and see’ seemed a less costly and less consequential choice than concerted public health action.”

There are limited medical supply stockpiles

When COVID cases started ramping up, its spread could have been slowed down had the world had stockpiles of personal protective equipment and medical equipment.

In early February 2020 the WHO warned of delays of up to six months in the supply of face masks and protective suits, and by March the shortfall between needs and manufacturing capacity was estimated at 40%. Supply chains were also overly dependent on a few manufacturers concentrated in a few countries.

There has been a long-running critical gap is in oxygen supplies across the world which could have brought down the death toll.

Vaccine nationalism is a concern

Australia got one mention in the report over our vaccine deals, though it’s not a positive one. With Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the European Union we have secured enough vaccine doses to cover 200% of our population (although many of these doses don’t arrive until the end of this year).

The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX) has not been able to secure as many doses as hoped, and the report found there needs to be an immediate political agreement for sharing and redistributing available doses based on what is best from a global public health perspective.