Covid-19 Urgently Needs Global Response

People all over the world are increasingly standing in solidarity with one another to beat the virus.

- Dinesh Weerakkody

The COVID19 pandemic will inevitably wreak its worst on the people, communities, and countries that are least able to withstand the shock or to provide a defence against it. The world’s epidemiologists are collaborating across borders to track the data as the virus moves around the globe freely. While they can’t predict when this will end, as Bill Gates noted recently, without a vaccine life will not return to normal. The vaccine the world needs will come early than expected, if only the world leaders unite and speak in one voice.

Faster response

Currently, the tactics needed to respond faster than the virus are being deployed in individual countries, states, regions, towns and communities. But we need to bring this response all together so that the world is using monitoring; mitigation; orderly supply chains for protective gear and medical supplies; and support from and for the world’s healthcare workers. This means reviving the multilateralism that many world leaders have squandered or ignored over the past few years and working together as one world and making decisions based on science and not on political lines.