UN Chief joins world leaders in calling for investment to end pandemic this year

United Nations (New York), Feb. 10 (IANS): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has joined world leaders in calling for urgent investment to end the Covid-19 pandemic this year.

The pandemic could be defeated this year but “only if vaccines, tests and treatments are made available to all people,” Guterres said on Wednesday.

The top UN official was among some world leaders calling for USD 23 billion to support the ACT-Accelerator, the landmark collaboration that makes these goods accessible to everyone globally, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times — and people are paying the price,” Guterres added, underlining the urgency to act now.

“Until and unless we can ensure access to these tools, the pandemic will not go away, and the sense of insecurity of people will only deepen.”

The ACT-Accelerator was established in April 2020, just weeks after the pandemic was declared, to speed up development and access to Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. The global vaccine solidarity initiative Covax is one of its four pillars.

The partnership brings together governments, scientists, philanthropists, businesses, civil society and global health organisations such as GAVI, the vaccine alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the UN’s health agency, World Health Organisation (WHO).

The campaign launched on Wednesday aims to meet a USD16 billion financing gap, and nearly USD7 billion for in-country delivery costs, in the bid to end the pandemic as a global emergency this year.

The co-chairs of the ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council, which provides high-level political leadership to advocate for resource mobilisation, recently wrote to more than 50 rich countries to encourage “fair share” contributions.

The financing framework is calculated on the size of their national economies and what they would gain from a faster global economic and trade recovery.

As the UN Secretary-General put it: “If we want to ensure vaccinations for everyone to end this pandemic, we must first inject fairness into the system.”

The funding will help to curb coronavirus transmission, break the cycle of variants, relieve overburdened health workers and systems, and save lives, world leaders said, warning that with every month of delay, the global economy stands to lose nearly four times the investment the ACT-Accelerator needs.

Financing will be used to procure and provide lifesaving tools, and personal protective equipment for health workers, to low and middle-income countries.

It will support measures that include driving vaccine rollouts, creating a Pandemic Vaccine Pool of 600 million doses, purchasing 700 million tests, procuring treatments for 120 million patients, and 100 per cent of the oxygen needs of low-income countries.

“The longer inequitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments persists, the longer the pandemic will persist,” said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who co-chairs the Facilitation Council together with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.

The UN and partners continue to warn against the dangers of inequity three years into the pandemic.

Although more than 4.7 billion Covid-19 tests have been administered globally so far, WHO report only nearly 22 million, a paltry 0.4 per cent were administered in low-income countries.

Furthermore, only 10 per cent of people in these nations have received at least one vaccine dose.

Since its inception, the ACT-Accelerator has funded vital research and development of new therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics, and delivered more than a billion vaccine doses through Covax, among other achievements.

The mechanism has an overall budget of USD 23.4 billion and donors are urged to contribute USD 16.8 billion. They have already pledged USD 814 million, leaving the USD 16 billion funding gap. It is expected that the remaining USD 6.5 billion will be self-financed by middle-income countries.

Separate to the budget, another USD 6.8 billion is required for in-country delivery of vaccines and diagnostics.

WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has underlined the urgent need to ensure tests, treatments and vaccines are distributed equitably globally.

“If higher-income countries pay their fair share of the ACT-Accelerator costs, the partnership can support low and middle-income countries to overcome low Covid-19 vaccination levels, weak testing and medicine shortages,” he added.

“Science gave us the tools to fight Covid-19; if they are shared globally in solidarity, we can end Covid-19 as a global health emergency this year.”