World leaders on Monday pledged 7.4 billion euros (USD 8.2 billion) to effective support of the research and development vaccines to fight the covid-19 global pandemic. The UN secretary-general said that nations have to contribute more than $8 billion in funds in order to speed up the production of vaccines and diagnostics therapeutics. He also said that the pandemic requires the most massive health effort because “none of us is safe until all of us are safe”. 40 different countries had their leaders coming together to support the ACT Accelerator through the covid-19 Global Response International Pledging Event. The event was hosted by the European Commission. The deadly virus has killed over 2.5 lakh of people and about 3.6 million people have been infected globally. The UN chief welcomed the ACT Accelerator launch and said that new tools could help curb the pandemic and that coordinated, comprehensive and good public measures are the most essential to save lives and also curb the spread of the virus.
He also added that as long as some countries still had covid-19 it was easier to spread to other countries because it is an interconnected world. Guterres also said that there was a lack of solidarity with the developing countries and that they lacked the proper equipment to battle the coronavirus. The Covid-19 “spread to every corner of the world, infecting more than three million people and claiming more than 220,000 lives”, he added. According to Guterres, he said a WFP plane departed this week from Belgium for Burkina Faso and Ghana and the plane was carrying personal protective equipment and medical cargo. The UN chief also warned that the worse is yet to come. Although China and the United States did not participate in the ACT accelerator movement other countries like Rwanda, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Finland, Saudi Arabia and South Africa besides the EU countries.
