The G7 needs to agree a long-term plan for fighting Covid-19

Governments around the world have spent much of the pandemic in crisis mode. Quite reasonably, policy makers have often struggled to lift their gaze to where the crisis might be headed over the longer-term. But after 18 months, and with world leaders gathering at the G7 this weekend, it is time to take a longer view.

Over the last month, the Institute for Government and the Wellcome Trust have brought together leading scientists and policy makers – from the UK, the US, Australia and India – with the aim of helping to inform that thinking. The discussions offered a powerful message: that world leaders need to agree credible actions now to tackle long-term threats.

Covid-19 is not going away, even as some wealthy countries eye their escape

The scientists agreed that we are in a turbulent second phase of the pandemic, in which the selection pressure caused by high rates of natural immunity and vaccination forces the virus to evolve rapidly. A year ago, they had thought the emergence of more transmissible and virulent variants of Covid-19 very unlikely. Based on previous pandemics, this second phase is likely to last several years before settling down.

The best-case scenario from now is that we quickly reach a situation in which Covid-19 is controlled through vaccination – but even if vaccines continue to prove effective against the variants that have emerged so far, supply issues mean this scenario is far from a given. The darker future sees repeated India-style outbreaks across middle- and lower-income countries, variants that escape vaccines, and the prospect of lockdowns being reimposed.

The latter scenario may jar in countries nearing the completion of vaccination programmes among adults and now debating foreign holidays. But there is a big risk that political attention on the pandemic wanes and Covid-19 becomes seen as a “poor-world disease”. But the pandemic is not ending any time soon, and such a loss of focus would raise the prospect of a more painful and prolonged crisis.

The G7 should focus on health resilience as well as vaccines

Much of the pre-summit discussion has, rightly, been about vaccines. Global leaders need to move beyond the patent waiver (seen as potentially useful, but not a short-term solution) and warm words to agree concrete numbers and dates for distributing vaccine. Countries like the UK, which has ordered over seven doses per person, can meet their own vaccination targets and share a substantial number of doses. The G7 also ought to meet much of the current financing gap. If this G7 meeting is to be the “Bretton Woods of Covid”, agreement on these points is essential.

It would be a mistake, though, for the G7 to focus on vaccines alone as the route out of the pandemic. Instead, countries need to take a systemic view of how to improve global health infrastructure, from surveillance (including testing and genomic sequencing) to data-sharing to health capacity and hygiene. These will be the core components of identifying and managing new threats (whether Covid-19 variants or other diseases) as they appear. The pandemic has exposed how underinvestment in these areas has left the world vulnerable.

Covid-19 has been an extraordinary global threat, but the international response to it has often been weak and fragmented. World leaders need to change that, starting with the agreement of an ambitious global plan this weekend.