COVID-19 in 2021: A Call for Collaboration

For many years now the world has anticipated a global pandemic Aware of the devastating impact of pandemic influenza after the first World War, we have been awaiting a similar threat and the changes it would bring to our way of life, health, and the global economy Alarm bells rang out loud and clear with significant epidemics in recent years Outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Zika provided an indication of the health, social, economic, and political impacts that rapid infectious disease spread can have in a globally interconnected world This did accelerate preparations, but as we have seen, significant weaknesses in global systems have been exposed The world has been on a journey to build preparedness and epidemic and pandemic response capacity The International Health Regulations, which were updated in 2005, provided a clear framework against which countries could assess their capacity to respond, with an ‘all hazards’ response to potential threats However, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Joint External Evaluation (JEE) process helped highlight that significant weaknesses remained after more than 100 countries undertook voluntary assessments of their global health security status (1) Efforts to mobilize global resources to strengthen preparedness were underway, and progress was being made, but it is now clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that in many cases preparations were too little, too narrow, and too late