WHO chief urges countries to complete pandemic agreement

GENEVA: The World Health Organization chief on Monday urged countries to complete the missing piece of a pandemic agreement designed to avoid the panic and chaos of Covid-19 this week.

WHO member states meeting at the UN health agency’s Geneva headquarters have until Saturday to thrash out the trickiest bit of the entire treaty — the nuts and bolts of how a vital portion of the text will work in practice.

“We must get this done. The next pandemic will not wait,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted.