Due diligence in pandemic: state accountability for Covid-19 under international law

Abstract

In a press conference in February 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, almost prophetically: "a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack."1 He went on to describe the novel coronavirus first identified in the city of Wuhan-Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-as "public enemy number one" for the world.2 Only a month later, with more than 4,000 deaths on record and in reaction to "the alarming levels of inaction" 4 everywhere, the WHO classified the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic, thus formally recognising the uncontrolled spread of the virus all over the world.