Countries scramble to draft ‘pandemic treaty’ to avoid mistakes made during COVID

GENEVA – After the coronavirus pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, disrupted economies and killed millions of people, leaders at the World Health Organization and around the world vowed to do better in the future. Years later, countries are still struggling to come to an agreed plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak.

A ninth and final round of talks involving governments, advocacy groups and others to finalize a “pandemic treaty” is scheduled to end on Friday. The aim of the agreement: guidelines on how the WHO’s 194 member countries can stop future pandemics and better share scarce resources. But experts warn that there are virtually no consequences for countries that fail to comply.

WHO countries have asked the UN health agency to oversee negotiations for a 2021 pandemic deal. Envoys have been working long hours in recent weeks to prepare a draft before a self-imposed deadline at the end of this month: the ratification of the agreement at the WHO annual meeting. But deep divisions could derail it.

Republican US senators wrote a letter to the Biden administration last week criticizing the bill for focusing on issues such as “destroying intellectual property rights” and “overburdening the WHO”.

The British health department said it would only agree to a deal if it was “firmly in the UK’s national interest and respected national sovereignty”.

And many developing countries say it is unfair that they are expected to provide virus samples to help develop vaccines and treatments, but then cannot afford them.

“This pandemic treaty is a very noble pursuit, but it fails to take political realities into account,” said Sara Davies, professor of international relations at Griffith University in Australia.

For example, the agreement attempts to bridge the gap that has occurred between COVID-19 vaccines in rich and poorer countries, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom said is “a catastrophic moral failure.”

The project says that the WHO should take 20% of the production of products related to the pandemic, such as tests, treatments and vaccines, and urges countries to disclose their agreements with private companies.

“There is no mechanism in the WHO that makes life really difficult for any country that decides not to act in accordance with the treaty,” Davies said.

Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health expert at Harvard University, said that, similar to global climate agreements, the draft pandemic treaty would provide at least one new forum for countries to try to hold each other accountable, where governments will have to explain what measures they have taken.

The pandemic treaty “is not about someone telling a country’s government what it can and cannot do,” said Roland Driece, co-chair of the WHO negotiating council for the agreement.

There are legally binding obligations under the International Health Regulations, including rapid reporting of new dangerous outbreaks. But these have been repeatedly ignored, including by African countries during the Ebola outbreaks and by China in the early stages of COVID-19.

Suerie Moon, co-director of the Center for Global Health at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said it was critical to determine the WHO’s expected role during a pandemic and how outbreaks could be stopped before they spread globally.

“If we are unable to take advantage of this window of opportunity that is closing… we will be as vulnerable as we were in 2019”, he warned.

Some countries appear to be acting on their own to secure the cooperation of others in the next pandemic. Last month, President Joe Biden’s administration said it would help 50 countries respond to new outbreaks and prevent global spread, giving the country an advantage if it needed critical information or materials in the future.

Yuanqiong Hu, senior legal and policy advisor at Doctors Without Borders, said it’s unclear what might be different in the next pandemic, but he hopes focusing attention on some of the glaring errors that have emerged from COVID-19 can help.

“We will have to rely primarily on countries to do better,” she said. “This is worrying.”

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Cheng reported from London.

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