Pandemic Cooperation

In April 2020, as COVID-19 spread to more than 100 countries in just a few months, world leaders launched a program called COVAX with one big goal: making sure vaccines reached poorer countries, not just rich ones. By the time COVAX wound down its main mission in 2023, it had delivered more than 2 billion vaccine doses to 146 countries.

You will be able to explain why diseases cross borders and require countries to work together. You will be able to describe what COVAX is and what the World Health Organization does. You will be able to give a historical example of pandemic teamwork before COVID-19. You will be able to explain what happens when countries do NOT cooperate.

Germs do not need a passport. During the 1918 flu pandemic, soldiers traveling by ship and train during World War I carried the virus between continents in weeks. Today, with airplanes connecting the whole planet, a virus that appears in one city can reach dozens of countries within days -- which is exactly what happened with COVID-19 in early 2020.

The World Health Organization, or WHO, was founded in 1948 as part of the United Nations. Its job is to track disease outbreaks across its 194 member countries and share that information quickly. On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, its highest level of alert, which pushed countries to start coordinating their response together instead of acting alone.

COVAX was co-led by the WHO along with two other organizations, Gavi and CEPI. Its goal was to deliver 2 billion vaccine doses fairly across the world by the end of 2021. It fell short of that early target, mainly because wealthier nations bought up much of the early vaccine supply for their own citizens first. Even so, COVAX eventually became the largest vaccine-sharing effort in history, proving that global cooperation, even when messy, can move faster than any single country working alone.