Covid-19 was not the first pandemic in human history. It, health experts have warned, will certainly not be the last pestilence either. The increasing human depredations on nature have raised the possibility of zoonotic diseases afflicting society in the form of global outbreaks. This is not mere speculation; evidence points in this unsettling direction. The Union health secretary had stated in 2023 that 75% of newly emerging infectious diseases that have affected people over the last three decades were zoonotic in nature. The recent outbreak of monkeypox is a reminder of the potency of such threats. It would perhaps be impossible to prevent the next pandemic. The emphasis should, therefore, be on preparation and management.

In this context, an expert panel of the NITI Aayog, India's national planning body, recently released a roadmap outlining readiness measures and response mechanisms to health emergencies in the first 100 days of an outbreak. The idea behind such an initiative was to examine the key lessons from both the successes and the failures in the management of the coronavirus so as to plug the gaps that could hinder an efficient response to crises in public health in the future. In a detailed report, the committee has recommended the enactment of a separate legislation — the Public Health Emergency Management Act — that will allow for a holistic approach to tackling a national health emergency. The PHEMA, which covers prevention, control and disaster response and endorses the creation of a robust health workforce, is supposed to be an improvement on such existing legislations like the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 and the Disaster Management Act, 2005, which were in force during Covid but were criticised for their inept responses to critical measures such as quarantine and vaccination. Creating a national biosecurity network to monitor human-animal interfaces, developing a stockpile of vaccines for treatment, and building a forecasting network along with advancement in research are some of the other key suggestions made in the report. The report, while being alarmist, provides a pragmatic framework for the future and empowers the government to take necessary action. But one of the most important lessons of the Covid pandemic has been the necessity of coordination between the Centre and the states to manage the crisis. The PHEMA's vision of a centralised mechanism to, once again, battle a contagion shows that some lessons remain unlearnt.