We believe that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic must adhere to six core principles:
(1) Protect lives. Protect lives through urgent, large-scale and informed investment in COVID-19 tests and life-saving medical supplies.
(2) Protect workers. Protect workers in essential occupations, including medical staff, with equipment, priority testing and distancing safeguards; ensure no one is forced to go out to do non-essential work; protect employment rights.
(3) Protect living needs. Protect access to food, shelter, a safe space to self-isolate, and essential utilities for all.
(4) Protect all the people. Protect the most vulnerable and deprived to safeguard their own and everyone’s lives; protect the ability of impoverished countries to feed and care for their people; protect global access to cheap vaccines and life-saving medicine when developed.
(5) Protect civil liberties. Protect society from the misuse or unnecessary prolongation of emergency powers introduced to address COVID-19.
(6) Protect from a recurrence. Protect from inequalities and precariousness; from underinvestment in healthcare and welfare; and from the regime of corporate patenting of vital medicines. Those exacerbate pandemics and risk devastating effects for the global poor and marginalised in the COVID-19 crisis.
Translations: Italian
Please share this letter as widely as possible, especially among healthcare practitioners and academics.
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