Until now, scientists are still unsure about the source of the “Spanish flu” that killed at least 50 million people worldwide over a period of two years at the turn of the 20th century. The first case was detected on a military base in Kansas, United States, in March 1918. Nine decades later another flu originated in Veracruz, Mexico, in 2009, and was referred to as “swine flu”; it killed an estimated 17,000 people worldwide. A decade later, we have Covid-19, with the first case detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019; it has caused more than 774,000 deaths worldwide as at Aug 17, 2020.
More than seven months into the pandemic, most infected countries have flattened the curve of infection relatively successfully – however, the United States is still battling with a seemingly uncontrollable surge in the number of new cases daily. The Trump administration has despairingly resorted to denunciation to defend its weakness in handling the pandemic, attacking China, with President Donald Trump at one point referring to the disease as the “kung flu". Sadly, instead of treating the virus as a global enemy, United States is using it as a geopolitical weapon to cause animosity. Even developing a Covid-19 vaccine has turned into a selfish endeavour with little or no external cooperation among the global candidates.
Covid-19 won’t be the last infectious disease to emerge so the world must be united in building a global framework to collectively respond to and contain a new outbreak in future. Six years ago, former US President Barack Obama highlighted the importance of investing in infrastructure to tackle a flu epidemic outbreak more effectively. This initiative should be expanded to include other countries and the World Health Organisation should be tasked with formulating and implementing the suggested framework without any delay.
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