The Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) during the COVID-19 Response recommended minor improvements Tuesday to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR).
Both the Review Committee and the Independent Panel were established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in response to World Health Assembly resolution 73.1. The Review Committee is tasked with reviewing the functioning and implementation of the IHR during COVID-19 and the Independent Panel’s mandate is to review and learn from the WHO’s international response to COVID-19.
The recommendation comes just one day after the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response questioned the response speed of the WHO and related countries at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.
In its second report, the Independent Panel found that:
- The IHR are of an “earlier analog era” and need to be brought into the digital age;
- Public health measures “could have been applied more forcefully” in China in January of last year, and implemented immediately in a number of countries that had “evidence of cases”; and
- It is unclear why the WHO did not declare a public health emergency until 30 January of last year, when the emergency committee met a week earlier, and why the WHO did not use the term “pandemic” until March to “focus attention on the gravity of a health event.”
In a statement about the second report, Professor Lothar Wieler, chair of the Review Committee, declared the IHR a “cornerstone of international public health and health security law” and found that “most of the necessary improvements can be achieved through more effective implementation of the existing provisions of the IHR.” Moreover, he observed that more transparency and cooperation were needed both during and between health emergencies, which digital technology could greatly assist.
Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Co-Chair of the Independent Panel, relayed concerns around lack of support for the WHO, finding, “[i]ts powers and funding to carry out its functions are limited.”
Both the Review Committee and the Independent Panel will issue final reports in May.
