Lancet report: ‘Massive global failures on Covid response’

A new report of the Lancet Commission has critically considered the global response to the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing widespread failures in prevention, transparency, rationality, basic public health practice, and operational cooperation and international solidarity that resulted in an estimated 17.7 million deaths, including those not reported.
The report also finds that most national governments were unprepared and too slow in their response, paid too little attention to the most vulnerable groups in their societies, and were hampered a lack of international cooperation and an epidemic of misinformation.
Dr K Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India and one of the commissioners of the Lancet Covid-19, told The Indian Express that the report offers several important lessons which can help in shaping early and effective global and national responses to future pandemic threats.
“The report notes that there were several weaknesses in the global response. There were delays in notification of the outbreak and in declaration of a global public health emergency. Superspreader events were permitted, lockdowns were not always followed energetic efforts for evidence-based public health measures for transmission-control. Even after effective vaccines became available, there was marked global inequality in accessing them. Global coordination was weak and many countries were left to fend for themselves,” Dr Reddy said.
The report provides recommendations for more effective and equitable pandemic prevention and response in the future. According to Dr Reddy, India has already initiated many of these measures.
“With increased funding and improved Centre-state coordination, we can establish strong pandemic prevention and response systems in the country. The high mortality caused the Delta wave in India has been mentioned in the report but it also notes that countries in Asia and Africa have done better overall than North America or Europe.”
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chair of the Commission, Professor at Columbia University (USA), and President of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network has said in the report that “the staggering human toll of the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic is a profound tragedy and a massive societal failure at multiple levels. We must face hard truths—too many governments have failed to adhere to basic norms of institutional rationality and transparency; too many people have protested basic public health precautions, often influenced misinformation; and too many nations have failed to promote global collaboration to control the pandemic.”
Commission co-author, Professor Salim S Abdool Karim of the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, told The Indian Express in a virtual interview: “A global vaccine-plus strategy of high vaccine coverage plus a combination of effective public health measures will slow the emergence of new variants and reduce the risk of new waves of infection while allowing everyone (including those clinically vulnerable) to go about their lives more freely. The faster the world can act to vaccinate everybody, and provide social and economic support, the better the prospects for exiting the pandemic emergency and achieving long-lasting economic recovery.”
The Covid-19 response has shown several aspects of international cooperation at its best: public-private partnerships to develop multiple vaccines in record time, actions of high-income countries to financially support households and businesses, and emergency financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. But the events of the past two years have also exposed multiple failures of global cooperation.
full report onwww.