The novel coronavirus caught many world leaders unprepared, despite consistent warnings that a global pandemic was inevitable. And it has revealed the flaws in a global health architecture headed by the World Health Organization, which had already been faulted for its response to the 2014 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. Will there be an overhaul of the WHO when the pandemic is over?
Since the novel coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year, its combination of transmissibility and lethality has brought the world to a virtual standstill. Governments have restricted movement, closed borders and frozen economic activity in a desperate attempt to curb the spread of the virus. At best, they have partially succeeded at slowing it down. According to official records so far, millions of people worldwide have been infected, and hundreds of thousands have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The actual toll of the virus is far worse and will continue to climb.
Governments will now have to balance the need to resume economic activity with measures that limit the virus’s spread until a vaccine is discovered—an outcome that is still months away, at best. How they attempt to resolve that tension could have implications for how long they remain in power.
The novel coronavirus caught many world leaders unprepared, despite consistent warnings that a global pandemic was inevitable. And it has revealed the flaws in a global health architecture headed by the World Health Organization, which had already been faulted for its response to the 2014 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. But the WHO has also been intentionally hobbled by member states in how aggressively it can react to public health crises out of concerns over sovereignty.
In the case of COVID-19, the agency became a political punching bag for U.S. President Donald Trump as he looked to defer criticism of his own response to the pandemic. Trump repeatedly echoed accusations that the WHO initially downplayed the severity of the virus in deference to Beijing. But given the WHO’s dependence on cooperation from member states, it is unclear what the agency could realistically have done differently. Trump subsequently heightened tensions between the United States and its long-time Western allies when he froze U.S. funding for the WHO. And in July, his administration formally announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the body effective July 6, 2021.
The pandemic has also underscored the global health infrastructure’s inequalities, as poorer nations were outbid for critical medical equipment by developed countries in the early days of the pandemic’s spread. And to the extent that it has diverted attention and potentially funding from responses to other public health concerns, including food security and other infectious diseases, the death toll could be compounded.
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