Humanity must prepare for the next pandemic

"COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic humanity will have to face. Infectious diseases remain a danger that stalks every country," said António Guterres in his message for the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness.

"Any outbreak, wherever it emerges, can turn into a pandemic," added the UN leader who called for "increased investment to improve surveillance, early detection and rapid response plans for all countries, especially the most vulnerable."

In addition, Guterres called for "strengthening local primary health care systems to prevent them from collapsing", ensuring that all people have access to vaccines "on equitable terms" and achieving universal health coverage.

"Above all, we must foster global solidarity so that all countries are in a position to stop the spread of infectious diseases as soon as they detect an outbreak," Guterres said.

COVID-19 continues to cause some 50,000 deaths a week, two years into the pandemic. By the end of December, it had caused more than 276 million infections and 5.3 million deaths.

To prevent such situations from recurring, the international community agreed in early December that there will be a treaty against future pandemics.

The World Health Assembly unanimously decided to launch a process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The draft will begin negotiation in 2022 and is expected to be adopted in 2024.

"The process may seem long, and it is, but we should not be naïve in thinking that reaching a global agreement on pandemics will be easy," said World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Gebreysus, recalling that the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control took a decade to enter into force. "Of course, we hope that this process will not take that long," he said.

Tedros also said governments must face "the inescapable truth" that global health security cannot be strengthened without strengthening the WHO.

A group of member states has been developing recommendations to make WHO funding more flexible and predictable. Proposals such as a gradual change in assessed contributions, which are calculated on the basis of each country's GDP, were discussed. States agreed that more time was needed to reach consensus and their draft report will be presented to the WHO Executive Board in January 2022.

The omicron variant continues to spread across the globe. The rapid spread is explained by mutations that make it more transmissible, because it causes more reinfections among people who have already had the disease and can evade some vaccines, and because, according to some preliminary studies, it infects the upper respiratory tract more than the lungs, facilitating its spread.

Rich countries have responded to the increase in cases by promoting booster vaccinations, but the WHO believes that widespread use of these booster doses may instead prolong the pandemic.

Vaccine production has been sufficient to have reached the WHO target of vaccinating 40 per cent of each country's population by September. However, "supply distortions" have meant that half of the member states have not achieved this figure.

The organisation's projections show that vaccine supply should be sufficient to immunise the world's entire adult population, and to give boosters to high-risk populations, by the first quarter of 2022.

However, they warn that there will not be enough doses to extend boosters to all adults until later in 2022. So they again call on governments and manufacturers to prioritise COVAX, which has already delivered more than 850 million doses, and the African Union's vaccine procurement fund to ensure that all countries reach the 40% target as soon as possible, and 70% by mid-2022.

WHO insists that vaccines are only part of the puzzle and need to be accompanied by other protective measures: avoiding crowded, enclosed and confined spaces; keeping a physical distance from others; washing hands frequently; wearing a mask; coughing or sneezing into a bent elbow or tissue; and adequately ventilating indoor spaces.