🛑 The worst ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic could have been avoided had the world not “lost” a month at the start of the crisis to indecision and complancancy, a major new report by @TheIndPanel has found
.@TheIndPanel has spent the past eight months reviewing the evidence around how Covid-19 became a pandemic, alongside the global and national responses

It highlighted 13 mistakes that plunged the world into the coronavirus crisis
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
The independent 86-page report was commissioned last May by the @who at the behest of member states and calls for radical reform, including a shift towards acting early on the “precautionary principle”, rather than waiting for proof of an emerging threat
It concludes that had the world acted a month sooner, Covid-19 may have been contained and the pandemic prevented

However, a number of factors were to blame for this delay
Chief among them was the @who’s ability to act

The report describes the WHO as being “underpowered and underfunded” and states that the body was hamstrung by conservative international regulations, preventing it from acting “immediately and independently” with respect to China
And even when the WHO did declare an international health emergency in January 2020, many countries were slow to act

“Most countries chose to ‘wait and see’, rather than take firmer measures that could have contained the virus,” said @HelenClarkNZ, co-chair of the Panel
Among the 13 mistakes that turned a small outbreak into a devastating pandemic, the report pointed to factors including complacency, a slow global alert system as well as geopolitical squabbles
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
“Covid-19 is the 21st century’s Chernobyl moment,” says the report. “The system as it stands now is clearly unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic”
On publishing its findings, the @TheIndPanel recommended that a new Global Health Threats Council, led by heads of state rather than officials, be created to sit above WHO within the orbit of the United Nations
The new body would be vested with legal powers – cemented via a new international Pandemic Framework Convention – and would push countries to act quicker when the next threat emerges

@sneweyy and @PaulNuki have more details here
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

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More from @TelGlobalHealth

10 May
🦇Could clues to the pandemic’s origins have been lurking in the @NHM_London all along?

@sneweyy was given exclusive access to its “treasure trove” of thousands of bat skulls, skins and pickled specimens dating back roughly three hundred years

This is what she found
The Museum’s bat collection, which includes specimens that pre-date 1753 – when the world-renowned institution was founded – is currently being digitised, which researchers hope may shed light on the origins of pandemics – including Covid-19
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
In total, the museum is home to at least 50,000 bat specimens

But it is the pickled bats, which have been suspended in time with their major organs intact, that could offer the most compelling clues about the origins of pathogens and pandemics Image
Read 8 tweets
5 May
🛑 The sheer scale of the crisis unfolding in India has grabbed worldwide attention, but its health system is not the only one under strain

In recent weeks countries ranging from Laos to Thailand have all been reporting significant surges in cases ~ 🧵
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
According to @who data, cases are the highest they have ever been and countries that had prided themselves on so far beating the virus are now succumbing to fierce waves of infection driven by new variants
Nepal's long porous border with India has put it at risk of being swamped by infections from its neighbour

The country is now recording 57 times as many cases as a month ago, with 44% of tests now coming back positive, according to the Red Cross
Read 7 tweets
6 Apr
Three years ago, gunmen came to five-year-old Rachel Ngabusi’s village

One of the men cut off her sister's arm. Another tried to cut Rachel’s face off with a machete

Somehow the little one survived. Her mother did not 🧵
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
Rachel is a victim of a conflict that the world has learned to forget

Since 2017, frenzied armed gangs in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo have forced almost half the population of a region the size of Ireland to flee their homes
The fighting has created one of the largest humanitarian crises on earth, with Ituri Province at the centre

Little aid reaches this corner of the DRC and the nation is now home to 5m refugees, second only to Syria
Read 13 tweets
30 Mar
💉This sleepy town in Brazil is running a huge coronavirus vaccine experiment

The aim is to track the real-world impact of jabs, as scientists work to understand how effective Covid vaccines are at halting transmission

@djknowles22 explains the science behind the methodology⬇️
🇧🇷As the pandemic hits new heights in Brazil and its vaccination drive stutters, Serrana's residents can barely believe their luck: every adult has been offered at least one dose of a Covid-19 shot

@sneweyy reports:
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
🗺️Serrana – a hard-hit commuter town in São Paulo state home to some 45,000 people – was chosen last autumn to host ‘Project S’

The study, which is the first of its kind, aims to answer looming questions about the real-world impacts of coronavirus jabs
Read 8 tweets
29 Mar
🚨 #Breaking The leaked @WHO report says virus most probably jumped from bats and then into farmed animals before spreading to humans

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
The highly anticipated World Health Organization report on the origins of Sars-Cov-2 has concluded that a leak from a laboratory, while possible, is “extremely unlikely”
Instead, the virus is most likely to have been passed from bats via an “intermediate animal host” to humans before sparking an “explosive outbreak” in Wuhan in December 2019
Read 6 tweets
24 Mar
While the picture is broadly positive in the UK, the third wave of the coronavirus is causing devastation in countries like Brazil

@jriggers reports 🧵
The country reported 3,000 daily deaths on Tuesday and is close to reaching 300k deaths in total from the virus

“We are close to or facing a catastrophe,” a medical bulletin read last week, adding that intensive care occupancy is above 90% across half of its 26 states
And while Brazil is currently the epicentre of the latest Covid resurgence the picture is worrying in a number of other regions, the @who says

After six weeks of declining numbers of fatalities the death rate rose by 3% globally in the last seven days to 60,414 in total Map showing deaths per million
Read 8 tweets

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