On August 17, 2022, the director of the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, delivered a speech in which she acknowledged that the agency had failed in its obligations in the face of the COVID-19 crisis.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
For Walensky, the CDC must in the future respond more quickly to outbreaks, redirect its efforts to public health needs and offer quality information so that citizens and health authorities can better understand and use the guidelines.
In the United States, the wave of misinformation has grown out of proportion. There was the lack of collaboration from the Chinese government in the early months of the pandemic. But it was rather the antics of US President Donald Trump, who minimized the impacts of COVID-19 and offered risky treatments, that made the headlines.
Almost a month later, a COVID-19 task force from the journal Lancet in turn made public a report on the lessons to be learned from the pandemic1. The report alludes to the monumental failure of the global response to COVID-19.
For the task force, the governments of many countries were ill-prepared, too slow to react and they paid too little attention to the most vulnerable in society.
The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimates that 17.2 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide.
Prevention in Quebec
Closer to home, Joanne Castonguay, of the Commissioner for Health and Welfare of Quebec (CSBE), wrote that the Quebec government had entered the pandemic ill-prepared. The response and simulation plans were not adapted and updated in the face of pandemic management.
The CSBE points out that the power of public health actors had been diluted with the 2015 reform and that the 33% cuts in the public health budget forced the regional public health directorates to redefine themselves. The reduction in personnel and the loss of influence within the CISSSs and CIUSSSs have contributed to a lack of knowledge of the actions to be taken in an emergency context.
In Quebec, elsewhere in Canada, in the United States and in several other countries, governments have been underinvesting in public health for a very long time, with only 2.5 to 3% of the budget allocated to it.
Prevent pandemics
There will always be infectious diseases that will spread from human to human, but they don’t necessarily have to become global. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who worked to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s, said that epidemics are inevitable, but pandemics are optional.
This is why the President of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, has proposed a new global architecture. A network of partners whose mandate would be to prevent epidemics. For me. Ghebreyesus, the pandemic has shown us the power of surveillance, genomics, diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutic drugs. But it also exposed the gaps and weakness in the global ecosystem.
For many, this means establishing better strategies for distributing vaccines to poorer countries, promoting public health systems around the world, ensuring the availability of screening tests and treatments for new infections and long-term COVID-19, and to promote prevention and health promotion measures that will make living and working environments healthy and safe.
A network of hunters
While overreacting can sometimes be embarrassing, COVID-19 has shown that underreacting can be devastating, Bill Gates said in his book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.
Of course, an adequate response requires taking advantage of the network of researchers that has built up around the fight against COVID-19, microbiologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, epidemiologists and those of other research areas.
With a network of scientists from all over the planet, it is easier to collect, analyze data, sequencing viruses, carry out screening, undertake epidemiological investigations and develop drugs and vaccines.
For example, researchers in South African laboratories incidentally discovered the Omicron variant during random genetic sequencing. After noticing abnormalities on the surface of the virus, they analyzed in detail and found many mutations that differed from the original virus. About thirty mutations in the section of the Spike protein, the very one that the vaccine was to target. Some 36 hours later, the World Health Organization was notified of this more transmissible virus, then within days the information was shared with a coalition of partners. What is unique about South Africa is its ability to detect these variants in real time because genomic sequencing of pathogens is well established there. Nevertheless, the researchers were surprised at the reaction of many states that closed their borders and stopped trade with South African countries.
Clearly, we need a global network of virus hunters to monitor outbreaks and assist countries when problems arise. And of a public health that is well funded, ready to counter the pandemic and prevent the next one.
With globalization, air transport, migration and climatic crises, the world is increasingly vulnerable to the emergence of infectious diseases. Take note, foster collaboration and adapt to change.