The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the devastating and deadly shortcomings of current global health cooperation and governance, leading 25 world leaders to call for a powerful upgrade: a pandemic treaty. The International Health Regulations (IHR) is the world’s current global health treaty, but from the beginning of the pandemic the regulations failed.
China’s lack of transparency during the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic sparked major IHR reforms in 2005—but fast-forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, and China still delayed weeks before confirming the outbreak. The government denied human-to-human transmission, despite widespread community spread. The World Health Organization (WHO) remained powerless to demand transparency and accountability, because it lacked the tools to independently confirm data or operate in a country without its permission.
