A new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks, which could ensure that no future virus causes a pandemic as devastating as Covid-19, an independent World Health Organisation review panel said on Wednesday.

We are calling for a new surveillance and alert system that is based on transparency and allows WHO to publish information immediately.” The experts found crucial flaws in the global response in early 2020 — including a delay in declaring an emergency, a failure to impose travel restrictions and an entire “lost month” when countries neglected to respond to warnings - that let the virus quickly spread into a catastrophic pandemic.

To address those problems, the WHO should be given the power to send investigators swiftly to chase down new disease outbreaks, and to publish their full findings without delay.

“It is critical to have an empowered WHO,” panel co-chair and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark told reporters on the launch of the report “Covid-19: Make It the Last Pandemic”.

Co-chair Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former president of Liberia, said: “We are calling for a new surveillance and alert system that is based on transparency and allows WHO to publish information immediately.”

Health ministers will debate the findings at the WHO’s annual assembly opening on May 24. Diplomats say the EU is driving reform efforts at the UN agency that will take time.

“We look forward to working with our member states to discuss the recommendations of this panel and the other committees to build a stronger WHO and a healthier, safer, fairer future for all of us,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said.

Looking back at the early days of the pandemic, the experts noted that Chinese doctors had reported cases of unusual pneumonia in December 2019. The WHO picked up reports from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control and others.

But when the WHO’s Emergency Committee met on January 22, it stopped short of declaring an international health emergency. That declaration did not come until eight days later. The committee, acting under the WHO’s International Health Regulations, also declined to endorse international travel curbs.