U.S. Re-Engagement with WHO Praised Amid Covid-19 Response Probe

After missing the first three days of a critical global health consultation, Dr. Anthony Fauci - the top U.S. infectious disease expert - was able to join the deliberations on 21 January 2021, the day President Joe Biden announced a "full-scale wartime effort" against Covid-19. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised renewed official U.S. engagement with the United Nations health agency and welcomed the new administration's intention to join Covax, the international collaboration to acquire and fairly distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Tedros, who is from Ethiopia, and other African health researchers and policy makers have long stressed that 'vaccine nationalism' - where wealthy countries monopolize scarce supplies - is both wrong and self-defeating, because "No one is safe until everyone is safe." Besides the reality that the virus does not recognize national boundaries, the current uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 fuels the development of mutations. Some may be more deadly, as well as more easily spread, and there is already concern that new variants can evade current vaccines.

Meanwhile, WHO continues its investigation into how the organization and its member states can learn from inadequacies in early Covid responses. The world's system for pandemic alert and response is "not fit for purpose", highlighting the need for a new framework in the wake of more than two million deaths from the pandemic, says a panel established by WHO. The independent panel, appointed by co-chairs Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia, and Helen Clark, former New Zealand prime minister, told the Executive Board that countries were slow to respond, noting "lost opportunities to apply basic public health measures at the earliest opportunity". The report urged countries to intensify testing, contact tracing and other public health measures to reduce virus spread. The panel will present its report to the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of WHO, in May.