A Global Virus Report Card

stayed silent as the u S coronavirus outbreak rageous. The leadership vacuum has left governors and health authorities on their own to grapple with record new cases and hospitalizations. Trump hasn't spoken publicly in a week, even though the virus is setting records across the country. He'll receive a briefing on Friday about vaccine development, but has otherwise focused his public comments on circulating debunked allegations of voter fraud and

criticizing Fox News on Twitter. Experts say that the President could help by appealing directly to Americans to wear masks, encouraging Republican governors to do more to slow the spread and publicly backing health officials. He could direct his staff to jointly coordinate with President elect Joe Biden's transition team. Instead, he has discouraged masks in social distancing and is blocking

the start of Biden's transition while refusing to concede defeat. Meanwhile, in England, new figures show that the rate of increase of COVID nineteen infections was already slowing the week the nation entered a four week lockdown. The total rate of infections was down slightly to one in eighty five in the week through November six. According to the Office for

National Statistics, estimated new cases remained about fifty thousand per day. Finally, Italy's government is likely to extend its region by region lockdown system through the entire winter. The Deputy Health Minister, Pierre Paolo Solari told Bloomberg Television. This could counter the spread of the coronavirus while protecting the economy. And Now for today's main story, New Zealand is one of the countries that has been most successful in crushing the spread

of the coronavirus. Now, the World Health Organization has asked former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark to co chair and independent panel evaluating the critical steps taken early in the pandemic. She spoke to Senior editor Jason Gale about how different countries approached the virus spread and what they did right and wrong. Helen Clark says there are a lot of lessons to learn from how different countries responded

to the pandemic. For starters, there's the US response. The country was slow to react to the pandemic, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention understood how serious the situation was as early as January. From what I can see, and also Bob Woodward's latest book Rages very informative on the steps that CDC and other outreach in the United States had to China. Was they were right onto it from an early stage. But of course it's

one thing to be right on to it. It's then to adopt a set of measures that will will deal with it now. One of the early points of contention, of course, is that the United States, New Zealand and a range of other countries are rather quickly put on travel bands from from China. The World Health Organization advice countries against implementing them and the only days of the pandemic, but the advice was ignored and one four countries up

to travel off. These are restrictions, order closures, or some other way of stopping potentially infected people entering. In the case of New Zealand, Ellen says, it was a prudent measure, absolutely indispensable measure. As I recall Auckland as the national airport was accepting around nine international flights from China a day. What if we hadn't stopped them, I mean, it would

have been a catastrophic. I'm totally supportive of cutting it off, and I think there's no public health grounds for saying that they don't help. Helen says the recommendation against travel restrictions is rooted in politics, not public health. It's all political. It's all who not being in a position to require that things were done, needing members state cooperation and not wanting to sufficiently alienate a member states so that cooperates less.

So that that's unfortunate, but as the evidence shows it doesn't. Didn't stop a lot of countries, including my own, putting on travel bands because it was the sensible thing to do. The WHO also came under scrutiny for praising China for reporting the emergence of the virus, even while others criticize the country for a lack of trans barrency. Whistleblower doctors there had raised alarm about the virus spread, and it appeared the country could have been faster at sharing important

information about the initial outbreak. Allen says, the organization was in a tough spot politically. My observation would be that the WHO is an international organization. You're in a position where it's very difficult to criticize a member state, any industry because you need the cooperation. You really have no paws except to persuade people to come along. The International Health Regulations set the rules on when and how outbreaks need to be reported to the WHO. The regulations are

legally binding and enforced mostly by peer pressure. COVID, though, has spurred discussions about whether they need to be toughened, as the regulations were after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Is this at Chernobyl moment of the kind which led to strengthen cars of access and enforcement for the International

Atomic Energy Agency on issues of of nuclear materials. Should there be an international convention as such which places more responsibilities or member states, would they agree to such expert responsibilities? Would they then accept the powers and sanctions that came with it. All that remains to be seen. How much of a wake up called has this been for every every country? But for now, the WHO is depending on cooperation, and I think that explains a lot about the way

it's behaved. The World Health Organization's decision making body wants to understand where any mistaps occurred, including within the organization, and what lessons can be learned from the response to the pandemic so that the world can be better prepared next time. Helen and the former President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Surley. We're appointed by w H Director General Gabrie Or in July to conduct their independent evaluation, which is

due next May. Helen says the panel will develop a timeline of how the pandemic unfolded and review things like whether the WHO has the right mandate for pandemic preparedness and response and whether the Director General has the relevant authority.

For instance, it took almost a week back in late January for the WHO to get agreement from outside experts on whether the new coronavirus constituted a so called public health emergency of international concern with a pandemic in a highly interconnected world six days of everything, lateness and reporting and notifying, the virtual is everything. So I think there are issues in there that we need to look at in the extent to which the Director General can call shots.

As the world's leading global public health official, he should not be constrained. He should be able to tell the truth to power and make a call based on his professional judgment and backed by the professionals of the organization. A public health emergency of international concern is the w chose most serious health warning, but it took until March when COVID nineteen was declared a pandemic for a lot

of people to pay attention. The word pandemic has typically been applied in the context of influenza and has used more to describe spread and severity. As we consider what it could be done better, perhaps you need a sort of gradient of decorations. At the moment, they have one tool, and it is to the clear the public health emergency of international concern. That's the highest level that they have, but that people don't sort of think horror when they

hear that. And the word pandemic has no meaning in the w h O lexicon at this time under the International Health regulations. But eventually Dr ted Ross used the term because he knew he had to do something more to shake up awareness. And of course once the pandemic was used, well, it was almost pender motive and people said good grief. But the terminology matters and getting awareness, so I think attention needs to be drawn to that,

Helen says. Another surprising takeaway is which country's responded best to the virus early on. Just over a year ago, a group of scientists ranked one d countries on how well equipped they were to respond to a pandemic. They found no country was fully prepared for a major health emergency, but the United States and the United Kingdom were at the top of the list, while New Zealand was ranked Heaven knows what factors were taken into account, but let

me make a couple of observations. One is that the countries which responded most effectively to that very early way were those in in East and to some extent Southeast Asia, which had had experience of stars as a major threat Helen was Prime Minister of New Zealand when severe acute respiratory syndrome spread around the world in two thousand and three, and the truth is I can hardly remember anything about

it because it didn't really reach us. What I do know the record shows is that what we did do was past purpose ready legislation, epidemic response legislation which was able to be dusted off by just sending a darn's government and implemented. And we did, as a result, develop a pandemic plan but it was flu. Now what this experience shows is that your pandemic planning must be very flexible.

And the real breakthrough, I think for the New Zealand government response was in early March when it threw out the flu pandemic planning and said we're dealing with something completely different. This isn't about flattening hers. It's too dangerous for that. We are going to go for a stamping about strategy. The evaluation Helen's working on will give examples of strategies that have been beneficial. In a sense, it doesn't matter so much whether a country as democrated or

not in that respect. What matters is that people have trust in the authorities and what they're recommending, and will say if that's going to beat it, that's good enough for me. And in New Zealand that had been people accepting quite extraordinary limits on their freedom of movement, which would never experienced before. But it paid off and today we live a much more relaxed life than than sad

they met people in many other countries do. New Zealand's Prime minister just seem to idn has earned praise for her handling of the pandemic. The country's had just over cases of COVID nineteen in total. She's one of a group of maman leaders who are center have been very effective in that regard. Ungerla Merkel trained scientists, authoritative politics, society. People trust Unglea Merkel not to fall with them if

she levels with them. They accept that. Very good performances by women leaders in nor Denmark, in Finland, in Iceland, in in Taiwan itself of course, and of course the fantastic examples of male leadership too. But we're leaders were prepared to engage the public, put all the facts on the table, be open about what they didn't know, because there's some things we don't know about the disease. I'd say this is the best advice we have. This is the judge that we've made, This is what we're asking

you to do, and people have gone along. That was Jason Gaile and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty beers around the world, visit bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Too for Foreheads, Jordan Gospure,

Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Jason Gail. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.