Preparing for and Managing the Next Pandemic

Long before the arrival of COVID-19, experts had warned of the dire need for countries to be better prepared to deal with infectious diseases. This warning, amplified during previous epidemics such as Ebola, resulted in only moderate and inconsistent improvements. Those measures include funding for health initiatives and international agreements such as the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), aimed at coordinating and regulating health policy. The devastating wake of COVID-19 proves the insufficiency of IHR and other policies. A 2019 survey found that all 195 signatories of the IHR were underprepared for a health crisis. This finding was evidenced by the ensuing chaos as countries across the world struggled to meet the extreme health and economic challenges precipitated by COVID-19. Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO), which coordinates health policy at an international level, lacked the requisite resources and enforcement capabilities. As a result, the WHO was left powerless to lead an effective international pandemic response. As the COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed health-care systems and halted economies in their tracks, the deadly costs of global health unpreparedness came into sharp relief. 

COVID-19 highlighted faults in global health security on two fronts. First, current international norms and regulations proved insufficient. Widespread noncompliance with IHR travel restriction guidelines and a lack of government transparency and information sharing hindered containment efforts. These shortcomings exacerbated devastating health outcomes and accelerated economic damage. Second, national health-care systems were unprepared and uncoordinated in their responses. Many countries, including the United States, failed to implement sufficient testing practices to contain the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, health care systems strained to handle the resulting surge of patients needing intensive care. That being said, several countries, including Singapore and South Korea, mounted robust responses that successfully slowed the spread of the virus. However, the global nature of the pandemic highlighted the need for coordinated action at an international level. In the future, the global community must cooperate to detect and prevent future outbreaks and to ensure health-care systems are able to manage a pandemic if containment fails. The measures required to improve preparedness were and continue to be difficult. Investing in public healthcare is prohibitively expensive in many countries and strengthening international norms is a difficult task. Moreover, with no way of predicting the next pandemic, gauging the effectiveness of improvements is difficult. It appears that some countries view common sense healthcare policies as financially unattainable or presently inessential. Considering the lessons of COVID-19, policymakers will need to decide what financial and political tradeoffs are acceptable to safeguard against future pandemics.