Thread by @kakape

“The pandemic has given us a glimpse of what our world could look like”, says @drtedros at start of #covid19 presser. “Our air and water can be clearer, our streets can be quieter and safer, and many of us have found new ways to work while spending more time with our families"

@DrTedros Says for that bold steps are needed to curb climate change and air pollution and points to @WHO’s “manifesto for a healthy recovery from #COVID19”: who.int/news-room/feat…

@DrTedros @WHO As societies reopen, says @drtedros, "the question we must answer is whether we will just return to the way things were, or whether we will learn the lessons the #covid19 pandemic is teaching us about our relationship with our planet."

@DrTedros @WHO .@DrTedros mentions that most of WHO’s budget, 80%, is voluntary contributions and most of that money is tightly earmarked. “In effect, that means WHO has little discretion over the way it spends its funds”, he says and calls it “one of the greatest threats to WHO’s success”.

@DrTedros @WHO At one of his first “Open Hours” which he held every Thursday, a staff member proposed creating a WHO Foundation, that would generate funding from new sources incl. general public, says @drtedros. “I immediately recognized the enormous potential in this idea"

@DrTedros @WHO Says work on the WHO Foundation has been going on since February 2018. “Today, after hard work of more than two years it gives us enormous pleasure to launch the WHO Foundation”, says @drtedros. "This is a historic step for WHO."

@DrTedros @WHO "The foundation will work with individual major donors, with the general public and with corporate partners”, says Thomas Zeltner, former secretary of health of Switzerland and founder. Aim is to support WHO’s resource mobilisation strategies and broaden its donor base, he says.

@DrTedros @WHO "In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO Foundation will initially focus on emergencies and pandemic response”, says a press release that was just sent out on this.

@DrTedros @WHO Q whether foundation is also designed to prevent single member state like US having power to jeopardize WHO’s mission.
A: @drtedros points out that work on this started 2 years ago. "This has many benefits.. and it has nothing to do with the recent funding issues."

@DrTedros @WHO Q about how countries should reopen.
"Lifting of the measures needs to be done in a slow and staggered way and needs to be data-driven”, says @mvankerkhove. Explains that country needs to know where the virus is, needs infrastructure to test, trace and isolate etc.

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove “There is sort of a perception that all technology and knowledge move from north to south", says @DrMikeRyan. That’s wrong, he points out. "In fact, I think the South is teaching the North or the North is rediscovering just how important core public health infrastructure” is.

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan Another misconception is that "public health part of the equation is the cheap and cheerful part” and sophisticated, technological part costs all the money, says @DrMikeRyan. "We have fundamentally underinvested in the public health architecture in all countries, north
and south"

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan “many countries have found that when they went looking for the ... public health workforce, when the system needed to quickly find cases, investigate clusters, track contacts, we didn't have that architecture in place in a lot of countries, north and south”, says @drmikeryan.

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan (You can always count on @drmikeryan to challenge preconceptions and draw on his deep experience in emergency response to give a no-nonsense view. One of the many reasons why it's always worth listening to him and why after 5 months of this I still dial into these pressers.)

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan Q about predicting pandemics and what countries could have done.
@mvankerkhove mentions some of what WHO has done in this areas: working with countries on influence pandemic preparedness plans, surveillance of human-animal interface, R&D blueprint, etc.

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan On vaccine trials, @drmikeryan says at this stage not rials are planned, but WHO’s approach will be like Solidarity trial "to develop standard protocols for vaccine trials” that member states to carry out their own trials.

@DrTedros @WHO @mvankerkhove @DrMikeRyan That "will allow countries to have comparable data to have standardized approaches and for WHO to invest in the in the necessary data safety monitoring boards and oversight mechanisms and ... to ensure that those trials are of the highest possible quality”, says @DrMikeRyan.