- A group of world leaders tasked with conducting a post-mortem investigation into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic has issued a reprimand for China’s early treatment.
- The independent panel on preparedness and response to pandemics, which reports to the World Health Organization, chastised the Chinese government on Monday over what it said was a mixed response to COVID-19.
- “What is clear to the panel is that social health measures could be applied more in January by local and national health authorities in China,” they wrote in a new report.
- The group has also promised to issue new guidelines to address the world’s global pandemic alert system ‘, which it says is’ not fit for purpose’, in another report due in May.
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A group of world leaders tasked with conducting a post-mortem investigation into the global response to the coronavirus pandemic has issued a reprimand for China’s early treatment. The group promises to follow up on a list of new recommendations on where the world has gone wrong in response to the crisis.
The Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response, a group of world leaders who jointly report to the World Health Organization, chastised the Chinese government on Monday for proposing a turbulent response to the rise of COVID-19, which eventually turned out to be control last year.
“What is clear to the panel is that social health measures could be applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January,” the independent panel said in a new report. The panel includes its members Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former President of Liberia.
China was the first country to fight the coronavirus pandemic, joining many regions in early 2020 to control its spread. The virus nevertheless managed to slip outside China’s borders.
The panel nevertheless noted that China is not the only country that has struggled in its response to the pandemic.
“Never in modern times has the international community been called upon to respond to a global health crisis of this magnitude and with such widespread consequences,” the report said. “The response of the international system has been found to be flawed in many respects.”
The group went on to call groups of countries such as those in the G7 and G8 ‘highly reactive’ in their COVID response, as opposed to proactive implementation of successful mitigation or control protocols.
With nearly 100 million confirmed cases and more than two million recorded deaths worldwide, the panel’s guidance could be crucial in preventing such deadly public health crises in the future.
Read more: How pharmacies and retailers such as Walmart, Kroger and Rite Aid can benefit from the vaccination
‘The global pandemic alert system is not fit for purpose’
To prevent another threatening virus from overloading the world’s public health systems, the panel promised to review existing preventive structures as well as resolve protocols to deal with emerging diseases.
“The global pandemic alert system is not fit for purpose,” the report’s authors wrote. “Critical elements of the system are slow, cumbersome and indecisive.”
The panel looked back at recommendations for dealing with the pandemic published by the World Health Organization during 2020, and identified nearly 900 individual guidelines issued by the WHO or its regional offices. The wave of ever-evolving leadership itself could have overwhelmed people and contributed to confusion, the report said.
“The large number of recommendations issued indicates to the panel the greatest risk of a lack of direction, clarity and consistency of the kind that would help countries set priorities in their responses,” the authors wrote, adding that they will continue to explore the “coherence and prioritization of recommendations and evidence regarding their actual usage patterns”.
The panel now plans to take a closer look at ‘the methods and tools used by surveillance and alarm systems’ and to determine how effective the systems are. They pledged to issue a report in May this year that could help bring about a “global recovery” and lay the groundwork for a more effective response than the one that unfolded in 2020.
Read more: The UK hospital system is on the verge of collapse, forcing excessive staff to postpone cancer treatments, stretch oxygen supplies and run the risk of catching COVID-19.
Another report claims that Chinese officials in Wuhan could not direct a rapid, coherent response to the virus
The panel’s conclusions emerged on the same day when the news agency Al Jazeera published previously unseen videos of the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. The footage, secretly shot by two reporters and smuggled out of China, is said to show how fear and confusion first spread in Wuhan, the hard-hit Chinese capital of Hubei province.
The videos, which according to Al Jazeera were recorded between January 19 and January 22, 2020, show the initial lack of urgency with which leaders in Wuhan met the new coronavirus. Later footage captures the unfolding in a much more serious condition that engulfed the city, which was eventually locked up. One of the reporters who allegedly filmed the footage wrote in his diary that “the lack of staff and equipment in Wuhan is causing many infected patients to be denied treatment.”
Despite China’s early struggles to combat the virus, strict public health measures have helped the country keep its newly diagnosed daily cases low. Last week, however, the Associated Press reported that China would set up a new 3,000-unit quarantine facility in the capital of northern Hebei province, in response to gradually increasing business.