Reviewing global response to the COVID-19 pandemic
The pandemic has foremost glaringly exposed institutional weaknesses in some countries in
dealing with public crises. Upon the outbreak of the virus, many public health systems were not
sufficiently prepared to deal with the sudden surge of patients. Furthermore, mired in a tricky
dichotomy between harsh restrictions and political, economic and socio-cultural agendas,
countries faltered in implementing public health strategies. While unevenness in national
epidemic control, a symptom of differing local contexts, is fundamentally inescapable, national
vulnerabilities were exacerbated by a lack of consensus and coordination across governments. As
a result, varying domestic capacities have translated to significant disjointment in managing
cross-border transmissions on a macro level, plunking the world into a self-induced quagmire.
The pandemic is a result of both circumstance and choice.
The state of global health governance that circumstance dictated was less than optimal. For one,
international health protocols were hardly prepared to combat a pandemic of such significant
scale. Since conventional health strategies are locally based, domestic health systems were first
networked across borders under the purview of the global health architecture after the SARS
crisis in 2003. The World Health Organization (WHO) is designated to spearhead global
response, keeping with their mission of directing and coordinating international health, with the
International Health Regulations (IHR) as the primary WHO instrument codifying national
obligations in dealing with pandemic threats. In theory, the WHO would issue normative
guidelines, monitor national health systems’ pandemic preparedness, and facilitate cross-border
