Kyra Dupont Troubetzkoy

Covid-slang: Let's check if you're up to coronaspeak!

Since the early days of the pandemic, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued tireless reminders of a single axiom: Protecting human rights will make the battle against SARS-CoV2 more successful. Blatant violations will create openings for the virus to thrive. Under lockdown now himself in Geneva since the early days, Executive Director Kenneth Roth, reviewed some of the key principles at stake, and why they need to be protected now, more than ever, in the COVID-19 era.

Ilona Kickbusch is part of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) and a well-respected consultant to health organizations and policy makers. Involved in the WHO Task Force against the Ebola virus in 2015, she hopes countries will favor the “cosmopolitan moment” –willingness to work together and put new rules in place – that usually characterizes the start of every epidemic, over counter-effective nationalistic reflexes. A vision which resonates particularly strongly as Trump suspends funding to the World Health Organization.

The reality of a new virus outbreak is a threat especially in fragile environments. We spoke to two MSF advisors, Caroline Voûte, Health Policy Advisor and Maria Guevera, Advocacy Advisor, about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo where the last Ebola epidemic ended on the 4th of April and where Covid-19 will probably disproportionately affect the most vulnerable.

In a TED Connects video called “The Quest for a Coronavirus Vaccine”, Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), called the world to understand vaccine as a public good and bubble up to find one for Covid-19 as quickly as eighteen months. The Vaccine Alliance announced April 9th that they would provide 29 million dollars of urgent initial funding to help 66 lower income countries respond to the pandemic.

The North West in Syria is currently the area most affected by the conflict where daily bombing and shelling have displaced almost one million people from their homes in the space of just a few months. The COVID-19 pandemic has added another layer of complexity to a catastrophic humanitarian emergency according to Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), based in Geneva.