Viruses know no borders but nationalists cling to sovereignty over pandemic plans

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Memories of the Covid years of lockdowns and restrictions are gradually fading despite the traumas suffered at the time. So it is not surprising that tortuous, multilateral negotiations in Geneva over a global treaty to prepare for the next pandemic have failed to command widespread attention.

Infectious pathogens know no borders. But that has not deterred rightwing populists from asserting that proposals to prepare the world ahead of the next health crisis, with a pandemic treaty for greater global collaboration, are an assault on national rights.

The UK’s right-wing Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, is among those claiming the World Health Organisation (WHO) is seeking powers to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates, prompting the UN body’s chief to speak of “a torrent of fake news, lies and conspiracy theories”.

The failure to agree a pandemic treaty at the World Health Assembly last month reflects many of the divisions that are preventing international consensus on other challenges, from global warming to the Ukraine war.

Even the potential threat from the still simmering bird flu situation failed to forge agreement. It has been found in at least 26 different kinds of mammals around the world. The first case of a human and fatal infection with H5N2, another strain of avian influenza, was identified in Mexico and reported by the WHO on 5 June.

Pandemic emergency

There is a “more difficult environment to find common solutions across countries because of the geopolitical situation,” John-Arne Røttingen of the biomedical charity Wellcome Trust told the Financial Times. “West-east tension is increasing … and the pandemic has increased the divide between the [richer] north and [poorer] south.”

Negotiators will meet again next month and WHO is bullish that its 194 member states will agree by the end of this year a pandemic treaty requested by member states in 2021.

Separately, countries meeting at the World Health Assembly did agree a deal to update legally-binding rules called International Health Regulations (IHR), including a new category of "pandemic emergency" for the most threatening health crises as well mechanisms for greater global collaboration on pathogen surveillance, information and response. IHR were last revised in 1995 and are binding on all member states.

The health talks “demonstrate a common desire by member states to protect their own people, and the world's, from the shared risk of public health emergencies and future pandemics,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Adding to its burden, the WHO was forced to deny claims spread by its critics that it wants a mandate to impose infection controls on countries, such as lockdowns and mask-wearing.

Opposition to pandemic treaty proposals

In the UK, Farage fronts a campaign group called Action on World Health. His ideological kin in the US include 24 Republican governors who sent a joint letter to President Joe Biden, saying the WHO would have “unconstitutional and unprecedented powers” over the US that would “undermine national sovereignty and infringe upon state rights”.

The UK, which had joined the US in opposition to some of the pandemic treaty proposals, acknowledged in a 2 June statement that it will be up to a new government to decide on adoption of the new IHR amendments.

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