COVID-19 Pandemic: Transitioning to Long-Term Management and Avoiding Mistakes of the Past
Key Highlights :
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed millions of people and wreaked economic and social havoc around the world, no longer constitutes a global health emergency. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared “with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency”, after the WHO’s independent emergency committee on the COVID crisis agreed it no longer merited the organization’s highest alert level.
However, Tedros warned that the threat of COVID-19 remains and that it is “still killing, and it’s still changing”. He estimated that COVID has killed “at least 20 million” people – about three times the nearly seven million deaths officially recorded. He cautioned countries against using the news as a reason to let down their guard, to dismantle the systems they have built, or to send the message to their people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about.
The WHO first declared the public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the crisis on January 30, 2020. It was only after Tedros described the worsening COVID situation as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, that many countries woke up to the danger. By then, the SARS CoV-2 virus which causes the disease had already begun its deadly rampage around the globe.
“One of the greatest tragedies of COVID-19 is that it didn’t have to be this way,” Tedros said, decrying that “a lack of coordination, a lack of equity and a lack of solidarity” meant “lives were lost that should not have been”. “We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.”
Vaccines, which were developed at record speed and started rolling out by late 2020, remain effective at preventing severe disease and death, despite new and more infectious COVID variants that have appeared. To date, 13.3 billion doses of COVID vaccines have been administered, with 82 percent of adults over 60 having received the initial jabs. However, greed and gaping inequities surfaced, as wealthy countries hoarded the jabs and poorer ones struggled for months to get hold of a single dose. An antivax movement on steroids and massive misinformation campaigns over social media meanwhile turned vaccination into a charged political issue.
The pandemic also exposed staggering inequality in access to healthcare and services, from the long lines of Brazilians waiting for oxygen for loved ones gasping for air, to the funeral pyres that crammed New Delhi’s sidewalks as the bodies piled up in early 2021. “We can’t forget those fire pyres, we can’t forget the graves that were dug,” Van Kerkhove said, her voice catching with emotion. “I won’t forget them.”
The virus was first detected in late 2019 in Wuhan China, but it remains unclear how and where it first began spreading among humans. The issue, which has been heavily politicized, has proved divisive for the scientific community, which is split between a theory that the virus jumped naturally to humans from animals and one maintaining that the virus likely leaked from a Wuhan laboratory – a claim China angrily denies.
WHO and its member states have meanwhile launched discussions about an international treaty or something similar to draw lessons from the mistakes made and ensure the world reacts more effectively and equitably to the next pandemic. The question is not if, but when.
