The world has not learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, warn WHO and World Bank

A year and a half after the outbreak of the pandemic in COVID-19, the world continues to give an insufficient response and does not learn from its mistakes, warned on Tuesday an independent body created by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank.

“If the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was defined by a collective failure to take preparedness seriously and act quickly on the basis of science, and a failure of leaders to understand our interdependence and act accordingly ”, stated a report from the Global Preparedness Watch Board (GPMB).

The pandemic revealed an affirmed the body’s report published in Berlin, when the death toll from COVID-19 approaches the figure of five million, according to an AFP count.

Taking into account the excessive mortality directly and indirectly related to COVID-19, the WHO estimates that the total number of deaths could be two to three times higher.

Of the more than six billion doses of vaccines administered worldwide, the head of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, denounced earlier this month.

“Scientific progress during COVID-19, especially the speed of vaccine development, gives us a source of pride”says GPMB co-chair Elhadj As Sy in the report’s preface.

“However, we must , such as the hoarding of vaccines, devastating oxygen shortages in low-income countries, the generation of children deprived of education, the disintegration of economies and fragile health systems ”, according to the Senegalese expert on humanitarian aid.

The millions of deaths caused by the pandemic are “neither normal nor acceptable”, but “lamentably, , Add.

The GPMB declared in 2020 that the pandemic had already revealed the extent to which the world was not well prepared for such disasters, despite warnings that major epidemics were unavoidable.

The situation in the region

The Pan American Health Organization (OPS) called a few days ago to attend to the local sources of COVID-19, which increasingly mark the trend of the epidemic in the countries.

The director of the OPS, Carissa Etienne, said that in the Americas cases and deaths from coronavirus have decreased in all regions, although she noted increases in new infections in Bolivia and Venezuela, more hospitalizations in eastern Canada and an increase in deaths in Mexico.

The most serious situation in the region is in the Dominican Republic and Barbados, which reported jumps of more than 40% in new cases in the last week. A higher number of infections were also reported by Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago and Martinique.

A report by the entity indicates that Latin America and the Caribbean, the most unequal region on the planet, since the appearance of the first case in the region in February 2020.

With only 8.4% of the world population, it concentrates about a fifth of the registered infections and around

The health crisis in 2020 caused the largest economic contraction in 120 years in a region that was already experiencing low growth. And although ECLAC estimates a regional GDP expansion of 5.9% in 2021, it warns that it will not be enough to recover the level of 2019.

Added to this is the slow and uneven progress of vaccination processes in the region: on average, in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Agencies

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