Canada and G7 Partners Endorse ‘Global Network Approach’ to Handling Pandemics

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos speaks during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 6, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

News Analysis

Canada and its G7 partners recently signed a pact to address pandemic readiness with a focus on “collaborative surveillance” and “predictable rapid response.”

On May 19 and May 20, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos met with counterparts from G7 nations in Berlin, Germany, to discuss how to “advance a global network approach to enhance pandemic surveillance and response capabilities and capacities.”

The G7 is an informal inter-governmental forum that consists of the seven largest economies in the world, namely Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.

“We want to nurture an enhanced network for pandemic readiness with regional and national nodes on all continents,” said the G7 pact, released on May 20.

Noting that the world is still “insufficiently” prepared for future pandemics, the health ministers reasoned that enhancing readiness is necessary to elicit a faster response to outbreaks.

The pact promised to strengthen “integrated, interoperable and interdisciplinary, cross-sector surveillance capabilities and capacities” between member countries as part of its collaborative surveillance effort.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 3, 2020. Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters

Having “swiftly available” measures is also part of the plan, including vaccines along with non-pharmacological interventions that responders, such as governments, can have access to.

To achieve their goal, the ministers pledged to provide technical, political, or financial support to international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO).

In addition, the ministers advocated for the WHO to have the authority to “proactively and immediately” make critical epidemiological signals public.

The group’s position matches that of U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration pushed amendments to the WHO’s governing regulations to give Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unilateral authority to declare a public health emergency in any nation based on the evidence he chooses.

The United States forwarded proposed amendments to 13 articles within the International Health Regulations (IHR) to the WHO in January for consideration during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA), held in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 22 to May 28.

The WHA is the decision-making body of the WHO. It meets annually and is attended by delegations from all 194 member states. Its main function is to determine the policies of the organization.

Among the proposed amendments, one removes an existing requirement in Article 9 of the IHR that, before taking any action, the WHO must “consult with and attempt to obtain verification” from officials in a nation in which a health crisis is suspected.

The same amendment provides that the “WHO may take into account reports from sources other than notifications [from] or consultations [with]” the nation where the problem is allegedly occurring.

A proposed amendment to Article 10 requires that, in the event the nation with the suspected problem doesn’t cooperate within 48 hours, the WHO shall, “when justified by the magnitude of the public health risk, immediately share with other [nations] the information available to it.”

Health-care workers in protective clothing conduct large-scale screening of local residents for nucleic acid after a new Omicron surge in Beijing in April 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The G7 pact said member countries will foster standardization of common protocols to ensure a predictable rapid response, while at the same time strengthening WHO’s response capacities nationally, regionally, and globally.

“[T]he IHR underscores the role that country-level preparedness and response capacities can have in the world’s ability to effectively respond to health emergencies that transcend borders,” the health ministers said in a May 20 communiqué.

“We therefore support strengthening the IHR through targeted amendments in an inclusive process as recommended by the report of the Working Group on Strengthening WHO Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies (WGPR) to be considered at the 75th WHA.”

In his speech at the WHA on May 23, Duclos commended the WHO for its role in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The health, economic and social costs of not being adequately prepared are catastrophic. That’s why Canada supports the idea of a new multilateral instrument to ensure better preparedness,” he said.

“This is also precisely why institutions like the WHO are so important. The WHO has played a key role in international health cooperation since its creation and, even more so, since the beginning of this pandemic,” he added.

“Canada believes that the WHO must be able to continue in this role. As we enter the third year of this pandemic, it is clearer than ever: the world needs a strong WHO. Like all multilateral institutions, a strong WHO needs to be sustainably financed, transparent, and accountable.”

WHO, COVID-19, and Canada

In the early days of the pandemic, the WHO actively advised against countries restricting travellers from China.

Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, who is a member of a WHO committee, gave the same advice in Canada, which was an outlier among several other countries that restricted travel from China.

Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam speaks during a press conference on COVID-19 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on March 20, 2020. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

Tam said in a House of Commons hearing on Feb. 5, 2020, that the WHO advises against travel restrictions on China, adding that, “China posted the virus genome very quickly. What are they getting out of it? I think the idea is to support China.”

A report published last June by the UK government stated that China has been using both aggressive and subtle means to gain control in multilateral organizations, such as the WHO, and using them to shift policies.

Meanwhile, the WHO has begun negotiations on a new international treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

In a news release last December, Tedros said the purpose of the treaty is to “strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.”

Mark Tapscott, Annie Wu, and Lily Zhou contributed to this report.