International Health Regulations and COVID-19 pandemic, challenges and gaps

Abstract

International Health Regulations 2005 contributed to the development of public health emergency control programs of international concern. The aim of their application was to mitigate the effects of the spread of such emergencies by proactive measures, stemming from risk assessment and expanding to epidemiological modeling systems that allow a logical extrapolation of what these emergencies can cause, and develop codified international strategies to avoid the occurrence of public health emergencies of international concern as soon as they are early discovered. The COVID‑19 pandemic came to be a model in which these regulations were tested in the biggest challenge that human societies have faced since the Second World War. The implementation of these IHR 2005 had a great positive role in limiting the spread of the disease, but some gaps, that could have been overcome and mitigate its consequences, appeared during the application of the precautionary economic, social and health quarantine systems. This study examines the importance of IHR 2005 and the main challenges it faced in general, focusing on the results of their application in the area of the COVID‑19 pandemic and the gaps that have emerged in the technical, educational and political field and proposals to address them.