GENEVA, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization said
that a global initiative to speed up the development and
production of COVID-19 tests, vaccines and treatments will require
more than $30 billion over the next year.
Providing details of the so-called ACT accelerator, launched in
April and aimed at pooling international resources to combat the
pandemic, WHO said “the cost plans presented today call for $31.3
billion in funding”.
So far, $3.4 billion of that had been pledged, the UN health agency
said, pointing out that an additional $27.9 billion was needed over
the next 12 months, including nearly $14 billion to cover immediate
needs.
The announcement came ahead of a major pledging event in Brussels
in support of the ACT accelerator, set to take place on Saturday.
“This is an investment worth making,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a
special envoy for the ACT accelerator, told a virtual briefing.
“If we don’t rally now, the human costs and the economic pain will
deepen,” she said.
“Though these numbers sound big, they are not when we think of the
alternative. If we spend billions now, we will be able to avoid
spending trillions later.
“The time to act is now, and the way to act is together,” the
former Nigerian finance minister said, stressing the need for equal
access for all to any safe and effective vaccines and treatments
developed.
Her comments came as the world counts nearly 490,000 deaths from
COVID-19 and over 9.6 million cases since the new coronavirus emerged
in China late last year.
“It’s clear that to bring COVID-19 under control and to save lives
we need effective vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, in
unprecedented quantities and at unprecedented speed,” WHO chief Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing.
He stressed though that a core principle of the initiative is to
ensure equal access for all.
“Vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics are vital tools,” he said.
“But to be truly effective they must be administered with another
essential ingredient, which is solidarity.”
The funds requested should make it possible to deliver 500 million
tests and 245 million courses of treatment to low and middle-income
countries by mid-2021.
They also aim to deliver two billion vaccine doses by the end of next year.
Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, pointed out during a
separate briefing on the vaccine pillar of the project, known as
COVAX, that antibody studies indicate that “a large, large proportion
of the world’s population, 90 percent, continues to be susceptible.”
“The best bet we have really if we are going to end it… is to
have a vaccine as soon as possible.”
There are currently around 220 vaccine candidates, with 15 in
clinical trials, and experts are hoping a handful of them will prove
successful.
The problem is that investing in vaccine development can be risky,
since 80 percent of vaccines in early stage development fail before
reaching clinical trials.
And since there will be a need to produce billions of doses
quickly, manufacturing capabilities need to be scaled up before it is
even clear whether a candidate will be successful.
To address this obstacle, COVAX is aimed at pooling financial and
scientific resources, making it possible to hedge the risk of backing
an unsuccessful candidate, and ensuring that lower-income countries
receive equal access to successful vaccines.
“The critical issue (is) speed. If we lose a month now, that could
mean 200 million fewer doses in 2021,” Seth Berkley, head of the Gavi
Vaccine Alliance, told reporters.
Even producing two billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021 will be
far from enough to vaccinate everyone.
Experts therefore insist on the need to guarantee that vulnerable
groups and health workers worldwide receive the first jabs.
“Having a subset of populations of high risk vaccinated around the
world is the best way to control the pandemic,” Berkley said. — NNN-AGENCIES
