An independent panel co-chaired by former Prime Minister Helen Clark has criticised the World Health Organization for not declaring an international emergency for Covid-19 quickly enough, and warns current projections show some low-income countries won’t finish vaccinations until 2024.
In an interim report reviewing the international Covid-19 response, the expert panel said WHO was “underpowered to do the job expected of it”.
“What is clear to the panel is that public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January.”
Even as evidence of Covid-19’s human-to-human transmission emerged, many countries “ignored” the signs, the report said.
She’s been appointed to the role by the World Health Organisation.
It criticised WHO’s Emergency Committee for not meeting until the third week of January last year, and then not declaring an international emergency until the end of that month at its second meeting.
“One question is whether it would have helped if WHO had used the word pandemic earlier than it did. ... Its use does serve to focus attention on the gravity of a health event.”
The panel said it was also “struck” by the “gravely limited” power of WHO to validate reports of disease outbreaks that have a potential to turn into a pandemic, and then send support to try and contain diseases.
“The global pandemic alert system is not fit for purpose. Critical elements of the system are slow, cumbersome and indecisive.”
A projection included in the report by the Economist Intelligence Unit for this month also predicted some COVAX-eligible countries wouldn’t finish rolling out Covid-19 vaccines to its wider population until the start of January 2024.
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The WHO’s COVAX programme aimed to deliver vaccines to poor and middle-income countries, largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
“Major weaknesses in the global supply chain have been revealed, including the absence of effective frameworks to ensure equitable access, poor stockpiling, over-reliance on single sources, hoarding, and logistics limitations,” the panel report said.
It warned of the risks of a "two-tier" world, where rich OECD countries finish vaccinating most of their population by April next year, while middle- and low-income countires are left behind until 2023 or 2024.
It added: “In most societies, disadvantage has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with deepening inequalities in health access and infections disproportionately affecting those in more precarious or informal employment.”
It comes as internal documents reviewed by Reuters last month revealed COVAX’s risk of failure was high due to the lack of funding and supply risks. This could result in billions of people around the world with no access to vaccines until 2024.
The panel is co-chaired by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
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