evidence: The G20 should plan and implement a 10-year effort, with accompanying financing, to ensure that all WHO regions—including the world's lower-income regions—have the capacity to research, develop, produce, and distribute all of the essential tools for pandemic control, including tests, diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and human resources for health, among others.494 Specifically, this initiative should include capacity building and innovations for vaccine producers in LMICs and should extend stringent regulatory authority capacity to these countries. [...] The overarching lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic is the need for national preparedness along with global cooperation and concerted action. Most countries lack meaningful pandemic preparedness plans. The countries that made such plans, such as countries of the Western Pacific region after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, have fared best in the COVID-19 pandemic. The enormous vulnerabilities that COVID-19 has exposed in high-income and low-income countries alike shows that plans should be comprehensive, cross-sectoral, and supported by global coordination. We support other commissions, including the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response,96 in recommending that each WHO member state should adopt, by law, national pandemic preparedness plans that meet international standards laid out in the Pandemic Treaty, and in supporting the WHO IHR regulations and the review of these regulations. Essential components of national pandemic preparedness plans are listed in the panel.