World leaders launch plan to speed COVID-19 drugs, vaccine
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World leaders pledged on Friday to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the globe, in the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiative.
Leaders from Asia, the Middle East and the Americas also joined the videoconference, but several big countries did not participate, including the United States, China, India and Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa were among those who joined a video conference to launch what the WHO billed as a “landmark collaboration” to fight the pandemic.
The aim is to speed development of safe and effective drugs, tests and vaccines to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19, the lung disease caused be the novel coronavirus – and ensure equal access to treatments for rich and poor.
“We are facing a common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as he opened the virtual meeting.
“Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen.”
During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, there was criticism that distribution of vaccines was not equitable as wealthier countries were able to purchase more.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the objective at a global pledging effort on May 4 would be to raise 7.5 billion euros ($8.10 billion) to ramp up work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment.
“This is a first step only, but more will be needed in the future,” von der Leyen told the conference.
More than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including six already in clinical trials, said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership that leads immunisation campaigns in poor countries.
“We need to ensure that there are enough vaccines for everyone, we are going to need global leadership to identify and prioritise vaccine candidates,” he told a Geneva news briefing.
