Guterres criticises lack of global cooperation on Covid-19

GENEVA: Antonio Guterres, Secretary General, United Nations, in an interview with The Associated Press, criticised the lack of coordination between countries in handling the Covid-19 crisis. He warned that the ‘go-it-alone’ policy that various nations are following would not be successful in defeating the coronavirus.

He went on to say that by acting in isolation from each other, countries are only making the pandemic situation worse and that ‘global coordination’ is the only way of defeating the virus. He pointed to the long journey that the virus has already completed before any of the nations have even realized the importance of coordination and cooperation. The virus, which started in China, travelled to Europe, then to North and South America, and has now reached Africa and India, and some people are already talking about a second wave of the virus hitting different regions in the near future.

The secretary-general said coordinating political, economic and social responses to the fallout from Covid-19, including job losses, increasing violence and human rights being violated, will also help mitigate the impact of the pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, Guterres has tried to mobilise global action towards defeating the virus but has seen very limited response.

While not singling out any country, Guterres said that US President Donald Trump ceased all funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) after the pandemic had started spreading outside China, claiming that WHO was unsuccessful in dealing with the virus because China had ‘total control’ over the working of WHO.

Guterres said that although the response to his call for ‘global solidarity’ from governments has not been adequate, he can see that communities and people are coming together, calling for global coordinated action against the virus. He noted that people, for example, are calling for the development of a people’s vaccine against Covid-19, calling on countries to avoid seeing the vaccine as an opportunity to make huge profits and to make sure that the vaccine benefits all, not just the rich and powerful.