Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images
WASHINGTON – With the COVID pandemic far from the headlines and mitigation measures relaxed in much of the world, the leaders of dozens of countries pledged this Thursday not to lose momentum in the fight against COVID-19 and to prepare for future epidemics.
“The pandemic is not over ” was the most repeated mantra by the participants in the second world summit on covid-15, which was held virtually at a time when the United States is about to reach one million deaths from the disease.
“We have to avoid complacency. This summit is an opportunity to keep our foot on the gas to control this pandemic and prevent future health crises,” said President Joe Biden, in a videotaped speech.
The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, recognized for his part that the war in Ukraine has displaced the pandemic from the headlines and that, “after more than two years , people are just tired of reading about covid-000”.
However, he insisted on the need not to lower our guard in the face of a pandemic that continues active and has killed more than 6.2 million people worldwide, a figure equivalent to “the population of Singapore or Denmark”.
$3,05 million dollars in new funds
Same what happened in its first edition, which took place ar last September, this second virtual summit promoted by the United States had significant absences: Russia did not receive an invitation and China, immersed in a resurgence of covid-19 in various cities, did not participate.
The dozens of countries who attended committed to invest more than $3 in total, 000 million dollars ($2,880 million euros) for continue fighting the pandemic and prepare for other possible pandemics that may come in the future, according to the White House.
Of that sum, $1200 million dollars ($924 million euros), including $800 million dollars contributed by the USA and another $450 million pledged by the European Union (EU) , will go to a new global security fund and preparation ion for the pandemic that the World Bank (WB) will launch in the middle of this year.
Beyond its contribution to that fund, the Biden government went to the meeting with little to promise economically, due to the refusal of the US Congress to authorize new emergency aid to fight COVID-19.
Biden lamented that situation during the summit and recalled that he has asked Congress for $5 ,000 million dollars to combat the pandemic globally, but that proposal is stalled in the legislature.
An official US source warned in statements to the press that there are countries that are “rejecting” US vaccine donations “because they don’t have the resources they need” to manage them, like “refrigerators to store them,” something Congress could fix.
USA will share a patent with the WHO
In the absence of new funds, The United States attended the virtual meeting with a significant commitment in terms of intellectual property: the announcement that it will share with the World Health Organization (WHO) ) the patent of a key technology to manufacture COVID-vaccines 000.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will assign to the WHO Medicines Patent Fund (MPP) its license for stabilized protein S, which has helped manufacture several covid-19, such as those of Pfizer and Moderna.
Those two American pharmaceutical companies have refused for now to share the specific technology behind their vaccines, but the WHO trusts May the US announcement help manufacturers around the world I help develop new treatments and immunizations.
Pending challenges
In the virtual summit, co-chaired by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal, several of the challenges of the current phase of the pandemic, such as the stagnation of the global vaccination campaign or the shortage of therapies against covid-19 in poor countries.
“We must speed up efforts to vaccinate the 70 % of the global population, especially those with comorbidities”, stressed the Prime Minister of Belize, John Briceño, who together with the President of Colombia, Iván Duque, was the only Latin American leader to give a virtual speech at the summit.
Briceño, current president of Caricom, warned of the decrease in the number of tests that are being carried out globally and re He agreed that Latin America and the Caribbean is the region most affected in the world by the pandemic, and that the Caribbean basin in particular has recently registered an increase of 05 % in infections.
For his part, the Prime Minister Spanish, Pedro Sánchez, announced during the summit that Spain will allocate $200 million dollars more ($192 million euros) to the global vaccination campaign against covid-30.
This investment will allow you to donate 100 million doses “yes epidemiological conditions require it”, which means 30 millions of vaccines more than planned so far.
By Lucía Leal
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