Five years ago, the world was hearing the first reports of a mysterious flu-like illness emerging from Wuhan, China, now known as Covid-19.

The pandemic that followed brought more than 14 million deaths, and sent shock waves through the world economy. About 400 million people worldwide have had long Covid. World leaders, recognising that another pandemic was not a question of “if” but “when”, promised to work together to strengthen global health systems.

But negotiations on a new pandemic agreement stalled in 2024, even as further global public health threats and emergencies were identified. If a new pandemic threat emerges in 2025, experts are yet to be convinced that we will deal with it any better than the last.

What are the threats?

While experts agree that another pandemic is inevitable, exactly what, where and when is impossible to predict.

New health threats emerge frequently. World health leaders declared an outbreak of mpox in Africa an international public health emergency in 2024. As the year ended, teams of specialists were probing a potential outbreak of an unknown illness in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now thought to be cases of severe malaria and other diseases exacerbated by acute malnutrition.

Maria van Kerkhove, interim director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization (WHO), is concerned about the bird flu situation – the virus is not spreading human to human but there have been an increasing number of human infections in the past year.

While there is a well-established international monitoring system specifically focused on influenza, surveillance in sectors such as trade and agriculture, where humans and animals mix, is not comprehensive enough, she says. And she stresses that the ability to properly assess the risk “depends on the detection, the sequencing, the transparency of countries to share those samples”.

The Covid-19 pandemic left health systems worldwide “really shaky” and has been followed by a long list of other health crises, she says. “Seasonal influenza started circulating, we had an mpox emergency, we’ve had Marburg, we’ve had cholera, we’ve had earthquakes, we’ve had floods, measles, diphtheria, dengue, Oropouche. Health systems are really buckling under the weight and our health workforce globally has really taken a beating. Many have left. Many are suffering from PTSD. Many died.”

What keeps her up at night, she says, is “complacency”, worrying that the response to a new threat will be hampered by “the notion that ‘it’ll just go away’, or ‘it’ll burn itself out’”.

Are we doing anything better?

The world has never been in a better position when it comes to the expertise, technology and data systems to rapidly detect a threat, Van Kerkhove says. The expansion of genomic sequencing abilities to most countries worldwide, and better access to medical oxygen and infection prevention and control, remain “really big gains” after the Covid-19 pandemic, she adds.

It means her answer to whether the world is ready for the next pandemic “is both yes and no”.

“On the other hand, I think the difficulties and the trauma that we’ve all gone through with Covid and with other outbreaks, in the context of war and climate change and economic crises and politics, we are absolutely not ready to handle another pandemic,” she says. “The world doesn’t want to hear me on television saying that the next crisis is upon us.”

The world of public health is “fighting for political attention, for fiscal space, for investment” – rather than nations working to stay in “a steady state of readiness”, she says.

The long-term solution, she says, is “about getting that level of investment right. It’s about getting that sense of urgency correct. It’s about making sure that the system isn’t fragile.”

Is money available for pandemic preparation?

Rwanda’s minister of health, Dr Sabin Nsanzimana, found himself dealing with two major disease outbreaks in 2024: Africa’s mpox public health emergency, and 66 cases of Marburg virus in his own country.

He also co-chairs the governing board of the Pandemic Fund, set up in November 2022 as a financing mechanism to help poorer countries prepare for emerging pandemic threats.

If the next pandemic arrives in 2025, he warns: “Sadly, no, the world is not ready. Since the Covid public health emergency ended last year, too many political leaders have turned their attention and resources toward other challenges. We are entering once again what we call the cycle of neglect. People are forgetting just how costly the pandemic was to human lives and to economies and are failing to heed its lessons.”

He says the Pandemic Fund “urgently needs more resources to fulfil its mission” – it has received requests from low- and middle-income countries totalling $7bn (£5.6bn) to fund pandemic preparation and response investments, against $850m available.

What has happened in international talks?

In 2022 the WHO began negotiations for a new pandemic accord that would provide a firm basis for future international cooperation. But talks failed to yield a result by an initial deadline of the annual World Health Assembly in May 2024. Negotiators are now aiming for a deadline of this year’s May meeting.

So far the talks have actually worsened trust levels between countries, says Dr Clare Wenham of the department of health policy at LSE.

There is no agreement on what Wenham calls “the big elephant in the room” of “pathogen access and benefit sharing” – essentially, what guarantees poorer countries are given that they will have access to treatments and vaccines against a future pandemic disease, in exchange for providing samples and data that allow those therapies to be created. Research suggests more equal vaccine access during the Covid-19 pandemic could have saved more than a million lives.

“[Governments] are just so far apart, and no one is really willing to budge,” says Wenham, with only 10 days of actual negotiating time scheduled before the World Health Assembly deadline. Practical questions remain about the feasibility of what is being proposed, she adds, “even if you get over the fundamentals of how unwilling governments are to compromise”.

Her assessment is blunt: “We’ve had the biggest pandemic of our lifetimes, and we’re worse prepared than we were when we went in.”

She is among commentators who fear that any accord pushed through in May will lack real teeth, agreeing only a top-level framework, with trickier detailed decisions delayed.

But those involved in the process have rebutted that idea. Anne-Claire Amprou, co-chair of the WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, said as December talks drew to a close: “We need a pandemic agreement which is meaningful, and it will be.”

The Guardian

A US transparency advocacy group has opened a temporary exhibition in New York with only one text on display: a print-out of all the files released by the US Department of Justice – roughly 3.5 million pages – relating to financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

The library, dubbed “The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” has bound all the documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act in 3,437 volumes, all numbered and organized on shelves. “The truth is hard to deny when it’s printed and bound for you to see,” reads the website for the Institute of Primary Facts, the Washington-based nonprofit behind the display.

Those interested in seeing the files at the library in Tribeca can do so by registering online. However, due to errors by the Department of Justice in failing to redact the names of some of the victims included in the documents, the general public is not allowed to consult the files. The exhibit offers exceptions for some professionals like journalists and lawyers.

The pop-up also has a display on the longstanding relationship between President Donald Trump and Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving minors.

The pair were friends for decades before they reportedly fell out in 2004 over a property deal, after which Trump reportedly denounced his former ally. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing after showing up repeatedly in the so-called “Epstein Files.”

“We’re a pro-democracy organization, with the goal of educating the public using these kinds of sort of pop-up museums and other in-real-life experiences to help people understand the corruption in the United States, the dangers to democracy,” David Garrett, one of the creators behind the project, told AFP.

Garrett said he believes “there needs to be real public outcry” about how the Trump administration has handled the document release, with many accusing justice officials of covering up Trump’s ties to Epstein. “And what we attempted to do here was to create, or help to create public outcry to have real accountability,” he added.

The exhibit is open to the public until May 21.

Le Monde with AFP

The price of Brent oil soared above $126 a barrel on Wednesday, its highest level since 2022, after Donald Trump warned the US blockade of Iranian ports could last months and peace talks remained stalled.

Surging more than 13% in 24 hours, Brent crude hit a record price since the war began on 28 February. Not since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has Brent topped $120, with the price then peaking at $139.

Oil markets have been spooked this week as Trump appeared willing to maintain the US Navy blockade of Iranian ports, with Iran responding by keeping the strait of Hormuz all but shut to other oil tankers.

US-Iran talks set for Islamabad in Pakistan over the weekend failed to materialise, so the stalemate grinds on.

Trump on Wednesday said Iran “better get smart soon” and in a meeting with oil executives discussed what steps could be taken to “continue the current blockade for months if needed,” according to a White House official.

US officials hope the blockade will force Iran to cap its oil wells and shutter production once its oil facilities, such as Kharg Island, have filled to the brim. Analysts are unsure how long that could take.

“The blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing,” Trump told Axios. “They are choking like a stuffed pig.”

The war is about to enter its 10th week, despite Trump’s initial projections of a 4-6 week conflict before Tehran would buckle. Global oil supplies drop by nearly 20 million barrels every day the strait is choked off.

Oxford Economics warned in a blog post that a six-month impasse in the strait could send oil prices as high as $190 by August.

Jim Reid, a market strategist at Deutsche Bank, said the jump in the oil price was feeding “growing fears about an extended stagflationary shock”, and pushing up the interest rates – or yields – on government bonds.

“Overnight we’ve seen Japan’s 10-year yield move up to 2.51%, which would be its highest closing level since 1997. It was a similar story in Europe too, with the 10-year [German] bund yield at a post-2011 high of 3.11%, whilst 10-year [UK] gilt yields hit a post-2008 high of 5.07%,” Reid added.

The economist Paul Krugman, a former New York Times columnist, said he believed most analysts have been “far too sanguine” about the effects of a prolonged Hormuz crisis.

“In my view, a full-on global recession is more likely than not if the strait remains closed for, say, another three months, which seems all too possible,” he wrote on his Substack on 20 April.

In 2008, during the global financial crisis, oil surged to record highs, with crude briefly hitting about $147. Two weeks after the US and Israel launched their first strikes on Iran, Tehran said the world needed to prepare for $200 barrels of oil.

Beyond ramping up the cost of petrol, the effects of the supply shock have cascaded through the global economy, causing inflation to rise and sparking some fears of a looming global recession.

US inflation soared in March, with prices up 3.3% over the year. Across the Atlantic, Britain is facing a £35bn economic hit and the risk of a recession in 2026 because of the war, a thinktank warned.

While Congress was questioning the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, over the war’s rising costs and strategy, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, spent the day making phone calls to India, Kenya and Poland, trying to shore up support in his country’s staring contest with the US.

The Guardian