The ‘new normal’ in a (post-)Covid-19 world…

It has been over a month now since what has come to be called lockdown has taken place around the world in response to COVID-19 – requiring most people to stay at home, with defined exceptions, in order to impose social distancing on the entire population – as a way of reducing the spread of infection. Some governments, concerned at the negative impact on the economy, businesses and job losses, and the costs of alleviating these – are now considering lifting some of these restrictions. This trade-off is high risk, however, because the virus is far from gone and increased infections remain unless people are far more protected out in public and at work than has been achieved so far.

These are local and national issues. What about the international ones? COVID-19, a highly infectious virus, was transmitted internationally, with lightning speed, by international travellers -- business and inter-governmental people whose movements between countries are constant, above all, as well as international tourists. But this also applies to those of us working internationally, e.g. with UN agencies, human rights bodies, humanitarian agencies and many others. In a globalised world, it’s not only news that travels fast.

For CSOs, as well as Governments and international bodies, particularly those related to the work of the United Nations, the past weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic have shut down our whole way of working. Among the meetings postponed are, most notably, are the Generation Equality Forum in celebration of  the 25th anniversary of  the Beijing Platform for Action and the Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. This hasn’t meant we’ve stopped working, however. On the contrary, it has led to some innovative and highly successful ‘new ways of doing business’. Instead of getting on a bus, train or plane to go to a meeting, we have been meeting virtually for conferences, webinars, briefings, information sharing, or just chats over a cup of tea in our respective homes. ‘Zoom’ ‘GotoMeeting’ and other platforms have become as much of a household name as Skype and WhatsApp. We’ve learnt that if you want to say something, you have to unmute yourself or wave a virtual hand and wait for the chair to turn on your mike – which might or might not be instantly depending on how many others want to speak – and there is also a chat box to make comments in, both to individuals at the meeting or the whole group. A new form of multi-tasking. We’re quickly getting used to it.

Life won’t go back to what we perceived of as ‘normal’ for a long time. Neither the lifting of restrictions on moving around nor requirements for ‘social distancing’ will automatically disappear, as countries partially come out of lockdown at different points in time, probably in a step-by-step manner that in itself is likely to last months.

Even then, things won’t be the same. Instead, there will be what might be referred to as the ‘new normal’. This is a highly sophisticated virus, and as stated by Dr David Nabarro, Special Envoy for the WHO Director-General on COVID-19, ‘for the foreseeable future the world in which we live must be ‘COVID-19 ready’.

It will have an impact, for example, on travel – meaning no more crowding on trains and subways and major changes to international travel, as well as a re-examination of sports fixtures, concerts and theatre visits.

From our point of view as CSOs, it will greatly affect whether and how conferences and meetings we attend related to our work at the United Nations will take place.

In any case, the fact is that COVID-19 won’t just go away. WHO has been advising from the beginning that governments will have to test, test, test and contact trace and isolate people each time someone has symptoms, until such time as there is a widely available vaccine. The best estimates talk about a minimum of 18 months, but those of us who are old enough to remember the HIV pandemic know that although treatment slowly became available, it took many years to be developed, and even then it was not accessible in many parts of the global south. Some 25 years later there is still no vaccine against HIV, which is still infecting people to this day. Nabarro warns, moreover, that “there is no guarantee that a [COVID-19] vaccine can successfully be developed…”

While we remain in lockdown, we have an opportunity to think, plan and be creative in how to work in the ‘new normal’ situation. First, an assessment is needed of what has and has not worked well during lockdown and how to refine and improve on what people have been doing. For example, working remotely is more complex than just having a meeting using Zoom or Skype. There are many different types of meetings, and some work far better than others.

Those of us working to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights and the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action have a common agenda in the context of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. However, development may have been set back for years because of this virus and the lockdown. Moreover, the goal of Universal Health Coverage has been shown to be a distant dream by this virus; even the richest countries have been grossly ill-prepared for what was coming. Even more importantly, no country has a health care budget that is even close to adequate, considering the reality of future pandemics combined with the ravages of climate change facing us. Confronting this reality will require major re-thinking in both global and national terms. We also have the commitments made in Nairobi, less than six months ago, which are further from reality than ever, which are no less urgent though they seem simple by comparison.

We therefore invite you to join us in sharing ideas and lessons learnt, through this website or CSOPartnersForChange.org. During the coming weeks we will raise a number of issues and post your responses as to what works and what doesn’t, so that we can continue our collective engagement in the agenda we know so well.

Please send any comments, articles, references that can be posted to this email address: covid19@commat.org. We look forward to hearing from you and in the meantime, please keep well and stay safe.

Marianne Haslegrave

Commonwealth Medical Trust (Commat)