Although the coronavirus is still among us and the pandemic is still marching around the world, experts are beginning to think about what we have to do to be prepared for when the next one arrives . And it is that many of these experts see inevitable that in the coming years we will have to face a new global health threat.
For this reason, and so that we do not forget in the years to come, the UN General Assembly established December 27 as the International Day of Preparedness for Epidemics. It was held for the first time in 2020 and aims to seek future solutions to combat the health challenges that may come in these coming years.
The 7-1-7 formula
Although there were already a few prominent pandemics in the 20th century, the coronavirus has once again taken the population completely unprotected and without much idea of what it means to face a health disaster like the one we have been experiencing for more than a year now.
This is why experts advise that the well-known 7-1-7 formula should be used. This action formula consists of detecting each suspicious outbreak in the seven days after its appearance. Afterwards, it must be communicated to the health authorities and have a response effort in one day, so that it can be acted effectively in the next seven days.
With this, according to experts, a rapid, forceful and strong response would be achieved against a new threat in the form of a pandemic.
Ultimately, what promotes this way of acting is streamlining the plans, improving surveillance systems, rapid notifications and investigation.
Learn from mistakes
If this coronavirus pandemic is teaching us anything, it is that the population was not prepared to act quickly. According to experts such as Óscar Zurriaga, professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Valencia, “we must be prepared for the next pandemic, although it is difficult to know when it will arrive,” he explains in an article recently published in The Conversation.
Therefore, it is important to keep in mind actions that have been carried out in other pandemics, and assess what has been done well in recent months. Epidemiologists have long emphasized that detection systems must be improved , keys so that a new pandemic is not devastating globally as the coronavirus has been. Only in this way, we will achieve that the damages are much lower than what could be a new health threat in the future.
