Kathmandu, 9 September 2021 – The World Health Organization and Member Countries of the South-East Asia Region discussed further strengthening health emergency security systems to effectively respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future health emergencies.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. No country globally was prepared enough to deal with an emergency of this scale. It is critical that lessons from the ongoing pandemic are used to inform our efforts to strengthen health security systems,” said Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director WHO South-East Asia, at the Seventy-Fourth Regional Committee meeting.

Strengthening emergency risk management has been a flagship priority program of the WHO South-East Asia Region since 2014, which has consistently been scaling up response capacities since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, a mega-disaster that hit six countries of the Region.

Months before the COVID-19 outbreak, Member countries of the Region had adopted the ‘Delhi Declaration’ to strengthen emergency preparedness capacities by scaling up risk assessment, increasing investments, and enhancing the implementation of multi-sectoral plans. Over the years, Member countries made considerable progress in implementing the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) for health emergency preparedness and response.

“Countries fully utilized the existing core capacities to control transmission and save lives while trying to match the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic,” the Regional Director said, adding that “critical gaps in our health security systems and arrangements need to be addressed.”

The Member countries discussed reviewing and reforming various aspects of preparedness, including but not limited to emergency governance structures and workforce, surveillance and alert mechanisms, laboratory, supply management systems, health-care system preparedness, and risk communication and community engagement.

The ongoing response has demonstrated that the highest level of political leadership and involvement and functional multisectoral arrangements are crucial in preparing for and responding to severe health emergencies. Such arrangements enable timely, decisive, and largescale actions, such as whole-of-government, whole-of-society responses, and mobilization of financial resources. These arrangements should be continuously reviewed and strengthened.

Another important lesson from the pandemic is the extraordinary scale of surge capacities across the gamut of response from surveillance and contact tracing to clinical management, laboratory testing, vaccination, and community engagement, that the countries need to plan for.

 The pandemic has reiterated the importance of an effective alert mechanism that ensures early notification and information sharing for global risk assessments and coordinated timely and decisive responses.

Another lesson learned from the ongoing pandemic is the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM). These measures can stop transmission but also have significant socioeconomic consequences. Hence, epidemiological analysis and response capacity assessment should guide timely adjustment of PHSMs with stringent measures being limited to where and when most needed.

Engaging with people for them to make informed decisions to adopt preventive behavior, support surveillance, contact-tracing, quarantine, and sharing correct information, is critical.

Dr. Khetrapal Singh said Member countries must build, strengthen and maintain core capacities required under IHR (2005) through developing and implementing the national action plans for health security, linked with health systems strengthening efforts.

“We must continue to work together to identify priority actions to further strengthen health emergency preparedness and response capacities to respond to the ongoing pandemic and prepare better for future pandemics, emergencies, and disasters,” the Regional Director said.

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NEW DELHI, 20 June 2021: The World Health Organization today called upon countries in WHO South-East Asia Region to scale up and rigorously implement public health and social measures, along with efforts to accelerate vaccination for COVID-19, to prevent another surge, as more countries confirmed the prevalence of highly transmissible variants of concerns.

“We need to continuously strengthen our efforts to test, trace and isolate. Societal interventions such as physical distancing, hand hygiene, and proper wearing of masks need to be stringently implemented. These measures should be in full force and for longer periods in areas reporting more transmissible variants of concerns,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia.

The public health and social measures are a wide range of nonpharmaceutical interventions, both individual and societal, and are cost-effective measures to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and save lives.

In addition to personal protective measures, they include cleaning, disinfection, ventilation, surveillance. Contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. Physical distancing measures such as limiting the size of gatherings, maintaining distance in public or workplaces, domestic movement restrictions; and international travel-related measures.

“These measures are critical for preventing infections, reducing transmission, and saving lives”, the Regional Director said.

Even as countries scale up vaccination against COVID-19, they need to implement public health and social measures in a tailored and agile way, she said.

A risk-based approach is needed for public health and social measures. These measures should be implemented by the lowest administrative level and continuously adjusted to the intensity of transmission and the capacity of health systems.

The capacity of the health systems includes both clinical care for COVID-19 and non-COVID-19, and public health services such as case detection, diagnostic testing, contact tracing. The risk assessment should measure both the actual ability to deliver services, and the performance of those services, Dr. Khetrapal Singh said.

“Where more transmissible Variants of Concern are spreading, these measures need to be applied more stringently and for longer periods,” the Regional Director said.

Earlier this week Maldives and Myanmar confirmed transmission of Variants of Concern. Earlier, Variants of Concern have been confirmed in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste.

The Variants of Concern, along with the opening of economies and societies, contributed to the recent surge in cases globally.

Countries across the world are currently at different phases in the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and face varying epidemiological situations. Though the Region is now witnessing an overall decline in cases, mainly due to decreasing cases reported in India, in some other countries the cases are still increasing.

(https://www.who.int/southeastasia/outbreaks-and-emergencies/novel-coronavirus-2019/sear-weekly-situation-reports)

“We must not forget that the pandemic is still around. We must guard against complacency, at any level. We must continue to implement combinations of public health and social measures until globally there high COVID-19 vaccine coverage among health workers, and high-risk and vulnerable groups,” the Regional Director said.

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