The World Health Organization declared that Covid-19 had ceased to be a global public health emergency three years after it first emerged in Wuhan, China, and went on to destroy lives and economies in more than 200 countries, infecting 704 million patients and causing at least three million deaths. Despite advances in global health management practices, the pandemic exposed serious lapses in institutional responses to the public health emergency around the world. Global cooperation was patchy, especially in the early stages of the pandemic, competitive nationalism evident in the form of disproportionate division of essential medicines and vaccines among countries, the surveilling instincts of authoritarian regimes were sharpened, and the democratic order weakened. It is thus necessary to learn lessons from the pandemic so that the world can prepare better for future outbreaks. The WHO Pandemic Agreement is a welcome step in this direction. Initiated by 25 heads of government and international agencies during the deadly second wave of Covid, the pandemic treaty aims to address the systemic failures that were revealed during a crisis of such magnitude. Apart from boosting healthcare workforces and universal coverage, the treaty prioritises the smoothening of the creases in supply-chain logistics, endorses the bolstering of technological support, envisions surveillance of pathogens that have ‘pandemic potential’ and demands equitable access to medical products. Given the escalating risk of infectious diseases, a treaty binding countries to act together to stem a health crisis is reassuring.

But concerns remain. The demand for fair treat­ment from high-income countries, preventing them from stockpiling vaccines and mandating them to share life-saving knowledge, lacked consensus during the latest — ninth — meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body tasked by the WHO to draw up the document. Article 12 of the charter mentions that the WHO will have access to only 20% of pandemic-related medicinal products, leaving the door ajar for unhealthy competition for crucial resources. A Conference of Parties to implement the treaty has been proposed. This should not go the way of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which lacks legal teeth for mitigatory action. Developing countries are also pulling in different directions on intellectual property waivers; the agreement may not meet its May deadline for finalisation. The stakeholders must get their act together before the next pandemic arrives.