The world has done well in sharing scientific information to turn the tide against Covid-19, but efforts at coordinating a global response were disappointing, panellists at a forum said yesterday.
They urged countries to draw lessons from the failure to work effectively together so that they can better face future crises and mitigate the potential economic and social disruptions.
Speaking at a forum organised by Temasek Foundation, the four panellists weighed in on how the coronavirus pandemic has shown that no country can protect itself without cooperating with others.
Dr Sebastian Maurer-Stroh, executive director of the Bioinformatics Institute at A*Star Singapore, held up how countries were forthcoming about genome sequences of Covid-19.
The Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, a platform that promotes the international sharing of all influenza virus sequences, has received over 380,000 genome sequences of the coronavirus from 145 countries. Dr Maurer-Stroh said this has helped to expedite contact tracing and paved the way for effective deployment of containment measures as well as vaccine development.
Singapore's chief health scientist, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, acknowledged that collaboration on the science front was good, but said there was a "general failure" in coordinating a global response to Covid-19. Had countries worked together well to prevent transmission and stop the disease from spreading across borders from the start, the coronavirus could have just been a regional outbreak, he argued.
"But because everybody else didn't do that when the regions that were first affected recovered, other people started getting outbreaks. And then you had a globally desynchronised outbreak… which is extremely hard to contain," said Prof Tan.
His views concurred with a damning report the World Health Organisation (WHO) released on Monday that laid bare a year-long cascade of failures by governments and health organisations worldwide in responding to Covid-19.
At the forum, which is part of the Temasek Shophouse Conversations series, panellists agreed that multilateralism is key to managing wide-scale public health crises, and urged countries to remain committed to working together.
Dr Jemilah Mahmood, a special adviser to Malaysia's prime minister on public health, lamented that multilateral cooperation for Covid-19 was a "huge disappointment". She called for the international system, especially the WHO, to be depoliticised, stressing the best authority should drive the response to such challenges.
She suggested that Asean form its own health authority that could guide the response of member states to pandemics like Covid-19.
Supporting a regional approach to better prepare for future health crises, Indonesia's Ambassador to Singapore Suryo Pratomo noted that Asean had recently launched the Asean Centre for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases, which seeks to strengthen the functions of national health agencies to prevent the spread of disease in the region.
Several panellists highlighted the importance of educating people to change their behaviour too.
Said Dr Jemilah: "The virus starts and the disease starts in the communities. The solutions must also come from communities."
