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Why did the world’s pandemic warning system fail when COVID hit?

Nearly one year ago, the World Health Organization sounded the alarm about the coronavirus, but was ignored.
  1. Amy Maxmen
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The World Health Organization (WHO) sounded its highest alarm on 30 January 2020 — a declaration called a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, or PHEIC, signalling that a pandemic might be imminent. Few countries heeded the WHO’s call for testing, tracing and social distancing to curb the coronavirus. By mid-March, it had spread around the world. Now, health officials and researchers are evaluating why the organization’s warning system failed and how to overhaul it.

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Nature 589, 499-500 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00162-4

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 23 January 2021: This story was updated to include explicit references to preliminary investigations conducted by the WHO and an independent panel about how the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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