It is not a fair fight, but it is a fight that many countries will face all the same. Government time is not the same as virus time; and at the moment governments across the world are being flatfooted. (The Economist, March 7 to 13, 2020) The venerated journal advanced its caveat to the world in parallel to the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic; the cardinal message being that the World must save the World.

We are entering a new world as the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold. Three months after the outbreak of coronavirus in the province of Wuhan in China, the pandemic threatens an economic as well as a health crisis and it has taken a while for the comity of nations to realise that both need fixing. More accurately, the health emergency plagued the world long before Donald Trump declared a national emergency. The signal emitted from Geneva on 11 March is decidedly distressing for the international community, almost a mild rap on the knuckles.

The declaration ~ long overdue ~ of a global coronavirus pandemic should put at rest the semantic quibbling over the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic. The academic connotation would seem irrelevant to the sick and the dying across the world. Over the past few weeks, the afflicted have been driven quicker to death than to state efforts towards care and cure. Not even China could stop people dying despite the extraordinary measures it took.

The World Health Organization has couched its declaration with the stern caveat against what it calls “alarming levels of inaction” in the fight against the spread of the affliction, potentially mortal. The announcement by the Director-General of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, comes in parallel to India suspending visas till 15 April and President Trump announcing a trans-Atlantic travel ban from Europe to the United States in a rather belated effort to stem the virus.

Italy, Iran, and South Korea have, after all, been the most acutely affected outside of China, from where the virus germinated. It is cause for alarm too that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed fears that the illness could infect 70 per cent of the country’s population. Over the past fortnight, the number of cases outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled, according to WHO’s chief.

Three months after the affliction erupted in China, the figures are staggering ~ at least 265,495 infections globally and close to 10,000 deaths. Dr Ghebreyesus’ statement has been explicit enough to spur urgent and aggressive action, and thus dispel the general perception of “alarming levels of inaction”. Which does reaffirm the failure of the medical fraternity, almost endemic. Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospital.

“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the many cases, the many deaths and the number of affected countries climb even higher,” is the core of WHO’s misgivings. “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity”. The word pandemic should not be used lightly or carelessly, he said, nor should it be misused. “It doesn’t change the imperatives of what the countries should do.”

In China, the economy has shrunk for the first time since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Nonetheless, WHO has distilled lessons from China on how healthcare systems should cope with the catastrophe, not least the opening of two designated hospitals in the span of a fortnight to accommodate 1,000 patients. While America has possibly unearthed a runaway epidemic, Governments are generally so behind the pandemic that the priority must be to slow its spread.

The international response doesn’t quite match the enormity of the tragedy. The experience in China and South Korea, where the numbers of cases are falling, shows that it is possible to turn things around. Three months into the crisis, the affliction rate is markedly lower in China than it is in the rest of the world. WHO’s evaluation would suggest that many countries are not doing what is necessary. It devolves on all countries to detect, test, treat, isolate, track contacts and mobilise their people in response to the pandemic.

The suffering has been collective; so too must be the response. Infectious diseases know no frontiers. The world needs sustained and coordinated action by all governments and global institutions if a worse catastrophe is to be averted. Verily has WHO put the world on notice with the warning that the counter-measures ought never to be mistaken as a “drill”. The fineprint of the warning would suggest that there is a degree of apathy in certain countries over the fearsome spread.

As outbreaks surge across Europe and the United States, ~ not to forget India ~ WHO has for the first time since last December, when the initial outbreak was reported, warned that countries are “not taking the coronavirus crisis seriously enough”. The conclusion is much too chilling even to imagine. With the ballooning deaths and afflictions and also, of course, the economic tumble, attention to public health doesn’t quite match the enormity of the tragedy.

It is a collective disgrace that protective gear, pre-eminently hand sanitisers and masks, have either disappeared from the shelves of medical stores or are availabe at a premium at least in West Bengal, if the Chief Minister’s order on a crackdown is any indication. The supply chain has been disrupted not by the economic tumble, but by the manipulative pricing. So grave a humanitarian crisis in a sphere as fundamental as health has seldom afflicted the world.

And yet it strains credulity that in the reckoning of the medical fraternity, there has generally been what it calls a “disturbing lack of hospital preparedness”. The potentially mortal affliction lends no scope for negligent nonchalance. While China and to a lesser degree Italy have been straining every nerve to contain and cure the outbreak, there has been needless semantic quibbling over whether it is a pandemic and the ramifications thereof. Any clarification of the medical vocabulary can for now be kept in abeyance.

Suffice it to register that the illness is fast assuming virtually endemic proportions. Never perhaps has education been so severely hit. If WHO’s estimate is any indication, 300 million students have been sent home worldwide. Affected too must be religion. With Bethlehem under lockdown, Pope Francis is scheduled to alter his tour plans. As much has been indicated by the Vatican in parallel to WHO’s caveat, indeed a robust denunciation of what it calls a “drill”.

Saudi Arabia is said to have “cleared” Mecca which is scheduled to be “sterilised”. Though China still accounts for the majority of afflictions and deaths, South Korea, Iran and Italy are the most acutely affected. WHO’s warning must resonate across the echo chambers of the comity of nations. “A long list of countries are not showing the level of commitment that is needed to match the level of threat that we all face,” is the message of the UN entity’s Director- General.

His statement that has clothed the warning ~ the most severe yet ~ is explicit on the point that “the epidemic is a threat to every country, rich and poor.” America’s nursing union ~ markedly not the physicians’ fraternity ~ has let it be known that “our nation’s hospitals are unprepared to safely handle COVID- 19”. Quite an indictment for a nation that is known for a generally efficient public policy, despite the occasional hiccups over state-funded health insurance.

Doctors in India, whether in private or state sectors, are by and large strangers to coronavirus, its prognosis, and aggressive treatment. The world is in crisis in the manner of a degraded environment. So too must be the response. Sadly it lies rather thin on the ground. Today’s 14- hour “janata curfew” is at best a totemic response. The world must fight and win.

(The writer is a Senior Editor, The Statesman)