World could have prevented COVID catastrophe, says independent global panel IPPPR

The catastrophic scale of the coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented, an independent global panel concluded on Wednesday.

A combination of dithering and poor coordination provided a "toxic cocktail" which hastened the spread of the virus that has cost well over three million lives, the independent global panel said.

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) explained that a series of bad decisions resulted in the fact that Covid-19 went on to kill at least 3.3 million people so far and devastate the global economy, reported AFP

Institutions "failed to protect people" and science-denying leaders eroded public trust in health interventions, the IPPPR said in its long-awaited final report.

Early responses to the outbreak detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 "lacked urgency", with February 2020 a costly "lost month" as countries failed to pay attention to the alarm, said the panel.

To tackle the current pandemic, it urged the richest countries to donate a billion vaccine doses to the poorest.

And the panel also called on the world's wealthiest nations to fund new organisations dedicated to preparing for the next pandemic.

The report, titled 'Covid-19: Make it the Last Pandemic', argued that the global alarm system require remodeling in order to prevent a similar catastrophe.

The panel even criticised the WHO for the delay in announcing the COVID situation as Public Health Emergency of International Concern. However the situation could not have been helped given the relative inaction of the countries across the world.

"Poor strategic choices, unwillingness to tackle inequalities and an uncoordinated system created a toxic cocktail which allowed the pandemic to turn into a catastrophic human crisis," the panel in its report said.

This report was requested by the member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) last year in the month of May. And the panel was chaired by the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

With inputs from DW