How nationalism threatens a repeat of Covid-19 tragedies in next pandemic

An initially strong draft WHO treaty focusing on rapid information sharing, fair vaccine distribution and relaxing intellectual property rights appears to have been diluted

Failure to forge an agreement and put aside national differences would be a tragedy for which we will pay a terrible price, perhaps very soon

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A baby cries as her mother receives a Covid-19 vaccine in a township near Johannesburg, South Africa, on October 21, 2021. Photo: AP

David Dodwell

David Dodwell is a journalist focused on Hong Kong and China since the 1970s.

Published: 8:30pm, 21 Apr 2024

With missiles whistling around Ukraine and the Middle East, you could be forgiven for not noticing the ninth – and what was supposed to be the final – set of World Health Organization (WHO) negotiations on an urgent and essential global pandemic agreement.

Created in December 2021, and tasked to draft an agreement that ensured we learned the grim lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic – around 20 million deaths and economic costs estimated by the International Monetary Fund at more than US$12 trillion – the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body has toiled for more than two years. After its ninth round of meetings in March, it is now set to present a final draft agreement to the World Health Assembly in Geneva at the end of May.

However, the desperately sad reality is that negotiators remain light-years away from any agreement. As a form of global amnesia descends on the traumatic pandemic years, it seems the imperative to learn lessons that might protect us from similar future tragedies is also set to evaporate into the ether. The depressing conclusion of Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet journal, is simple: “If a pandemic were to strike again, the same failures – vaccine nationalism – would be repeated.”

An initial “zero draft” that circulated more than a year ago now appears to have been diluted, or as the Lancet medical journal notes, “filled with platitudes, caveats and the term ‘where appropriate’.”