President to participate in roundtable on pandemic preparedness

His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa will tomorrow, 04 May 2021, participate in the Friends of Multilateralism's roundtable on the work of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.

This virtual gathering of Heads of State will be co-chaired by the Right Honourable Helen Clark and Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The panel was established in July 2020 by the World Health Organization's Director-General. It is charged with understanding the chronology of the pandemic, national and international actions and responses to alerts and transmission warnings, distilling lessons, and making evidence-based recommendations.

The Panel has since its first meeting in September 2020 been collecting and analysing evidence to build upon the lessons from previous epidemics and pandemics; establishing an authoritative chronology of how COVID-19 became a global pandemic; understanding the wider health and socio-economic impacts of the pandemic; and identifying gaps in the international system that need to be filled to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response.
The Panel has largely concluded the analysis phase, and is currently in the stage of developing and refining recommendations. These recommendations aim to stop outbreaks before they become pandemics; and should that not be possible, ensure a pandemic does not cause a global socio-economic crisis.

The President's participation will be as follows:
Date: 04 May 2021
Time: 12h00

Media enquiries: Tyrone Seale, Acting Spokesperson to the President - [email protected]

Issued by: The Presidency
Pretoria

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.