As the world recovers from the global pandemic of COVID-19, it is important to reflect on key lessons learned about global collaboration and preparedness. We can learn a lot from the response to the pandemic and use the experiences to inform a proactive approach in future.
The likelihood that a new disease will grow to pandemic proportions depends on the balance of several factors, including case fatality, transmissibility and symptomology. High mutation rates of pathogens like RNA viruses contribute to pandemic risk. Societal trends that increase human and animal contact, such as urbanization and climate change, can also accelerate the spread of high-risk disease outbreaks and pandemics.
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (nCoV) started in China in December 2019 and rapidly expanded to global scale – prompting WHO to declare a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020.
Despite the global success of vaccination campaigns against the virus and significant progress towards a vaccine, many people continue to experience the devastating impact of the pandemic. A recent report from Oxfam found that millions of people have lost their jobs or been forced to take early retirement as a result of the pandemic. This has hit the economies of countries across the globe, causing significant loss of income and contributing to the wider economic slowdown. The impact of the pandemic has been disproportionately felt by low and lower-middle income countries, where people are more likely to be dependent on just a few sectors of the economy.