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World in no better place to fight pandemics than before COVID: WHO review panel

The report acknowledged some progress, but said the process was going far too slowly

The world may actually be in a worse place than in 2019 when Covid-19 emerged, given the economic toll. A lack of progress on reforms such as World Health Organization funding and international health regulations, the report said.

The report authors, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, acknowledged some progress, but said the process was going far too slowly.

“We have right now the very same tools and the same system that existed in December 2019 to respond to a pandemic threat", Clark told reporters.

"Those tools were not good enough."

"If there were a new pandemic threat this year, next year, or the year after at least, we will be largely in the same place ... maybe worse, given the tight fiscal space of many, if not most, countries right now."

But all was not bleak. Clark also hailed that the "transformative work required at the global level to prevent the next pandemic has begun."

The body also welcomed some steps forward, including moves to establish a separate global health security fund within the World Bank, it warned that global interest was waning and the years it will take to set up other instruments – including a potential pandemic treaty, an international agreement to improve preparedness - were too long.

She pointed to how new mechanisms set up after Covid surfaced had made it possible to deliver around 1.5 billion vaccine doses to poorer countries, and praised the efforts under way to diversify production of vaccines and antivirals.

Agreement is also expected towards more secure and flexible funding for WHO, while plans for a dedicated pandemic fund are taking shape.

Changes to the International Health Regulations are being considered, and negotiations are under way towards a new "legal instrument" -- like a treaty or other form of agreement -- aimed at streamlining the global approach to pandemic preparedness and response.

'No time for complacency' 

But Clark warned that these changes were all moving at a glacial pace, with the WHO budget change, for instance, not expected to be fully implemented for nearly a decade.

"At its current pace, an effective system is still years away, when a pandemic threat could occur at any time," she said.

"If there were a new pandemic threat this year, next year, or the year after, at least, we will be largely in the same place as we were in December 2019."

At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic is still raging.

Clark pointed out that since the panel presented its report a year ago, 2.8 million more Covid deaths have been officially recorded, and that this "is clearly an undercount by many millions of people."

"Unfortunately, as much as we would all wish it to be the case, the pandemic isn't over," Clark said, complaining that "the political resolve to combat more waves of Covid-19 is waning."

"This is no time for complacency."

The panel called for a high-level meeting at the UN General Assembly and independent health threats council led by heads-of-state to galvanise some action.

"Only the highest-level political leadership has the legitimacy to bring multiple sectors together in this way," Sirleaf said in a statement.

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