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Bayer Lecture in Health & Biotech

Confronting the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 200 million people, killed more than 4 million, and ravaged communities everywhere. This fast-moving yet preventable pandemic has been exacerbated by an equally preventable problem: the poor state of global public health services. Howard Koh observes that while countries have struggled to ramp-up their measures for disease surveillance and monitoring, testing, tracing, social distancing, mask implementation, and vaccine supply, the pandemic has also strained hospitals and health systems and disrupted businesses and schools—as well as exposed glaring inequities. Meanwhile, the United States faces rising global expectations to reduce further suffering by fully leveraging its critical vaccine manufacturing and distribution capacity. Successful global COVID-19 recovery, Koh argues, can only come from rebuilding and revitalizing public health systems so that the world can move past this pandemic and be better prepared for the next.