A group of medical experts said children ages 12 to 15 years old can safely take the vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, opening an important new phase of the U.S. immunization effort.
Published Wednesday, May 12, 2021 6:12AM EDT GENEVA (AP) A panel of independent experts who reviewed the World Health Organization s response to the coronavirus pandemic says the U.N. health agency should be granted “guaranteed rights of access” in countries to investigate emerging outbreaks, a contentious idea that would give it more powers and require member states to give up some of theirs. In a report released Wednesday, the panel faulted countries worldwide for their sluggish response to COVID-19, saying most waited to see how the virus was spreading until it was too late to contain it, leading to catastrophic results. The group also slammed the lack of global leadership and restrictive international health laws that “hindered” WHO s response to the pandemic.
Next pandemic: A new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks to help ensure no future virus causes a pandemic as devastating as COVID-19,
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A WHO panel report has recommended systems to prevent another pandemic.
One recommendation is that a new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks.
The report found shortcomings in the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the early stages.
A new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks to help ensure no future virus causes a pandemic as devastating as Covid-19, an independent World Health Organisation review panel said on Wednesday.
The experts found crucial shortcomings in the global response in early 2020 - including a delay in declaring an emergency, a failure to impose travel restrictions and an entire lost month when countries neglected to respond to warnings - that let the virus quickly spread into a crippling pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) should be overhauled and given more authority to investigate global disease threats, according to a review of the international Covid-19 response that found a myriad of failures, gaps, and delays allowed the coronavirus to mushroom into a pandemic.
While stopping short of assigning blame to any particular factor, the report released Wednesday by an independent panel co-chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark linked the severity of the global outbreak to deficiencies across governments, the WHO and other multilateral organizations, and regulations that guide official actions.
The panel also called for an agreement to waive vaccine patents, limited terms for WHO leaders, and an oversight body and legally binding treaty to bolster the prevention and response to future pandemics. The international system, the panel said, remains unfit to avoid another disease from spiraling into one matching Covid-19, which threatens to cost the worl