After covid, Is world ready for the next pandemic?

GENEVA, Switzerland — An awkward question remains five years after Covid-19 began its deadly rampage: Is the world ready to handle the next pandemic?

The World Health Organization, which was at the heart of the pandemic response, has been galvanizing efforts to determine where the next threat might come from and to ensure the planet is ready to face it.

But while the UN health agency considers the world more prepared than it was when Covid hit, it warns we are not nearly ready enough.

Gravediggers lower a coffin during a funeral for a victim of the Covid-19 coronavirus at Kayu Manis cemetery in Bogor, West Java on Oct. 4, 2020. Five years since Covid-19 started upending the world, the virus is still infecting and killing people across the globe — though at far lower levels than during the height of the pandemic. Photo by ADITYA AJI / AFP

View from the WHO

Asked whether the world was better prepared for the next pandemic, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said recently: «Yes and no.»

«If the next pandemic arrived today, the world would still face some of the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities,» he warned.

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«But the world has also learned many of the painful lessons the pandemic taught us, and has taken significant steps to strengthen its defenses.»

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, said it was a matter of when, not if, we will face another pandemic.

«There's a lot that has improved because of the 2009 (H1N1) flu pandemic but also because of Covid. But I think the world is not ready for another infectious disease massive outbreak or pandemic.»

Expert views

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The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, created by the WHO, was blunt in its assessment.

«In 2025, the world is not ready to tackle another pandemic threat,» it said, citing continued inequality in access to funding and pandemic-fighting tools like vaccines.

Renowned Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans told AFP the success and speedy production of mRNA vaccines were a «game changer» for the next pandemic.

However, she warned that «a seeming increase in vaccine hesitancy,» amid «staggering» levels of