Members of the World Health Organization voted emphatically in favour of a potentially groundbreaking global treaty on improving pandemic preparedness at the World Health Assembly on Monday.

T he Pandemic Agreement, just adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO), is a landmark for global public health. Had such an agreement been in place before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic would have looked very different.

The World Health Organization’s member countries have approved an agreement to better prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics in the wake of the devastation wrought by the coronavirus