United Nations leaders called on Monday for a global effort to develop and distribute to all at affordable prices vaccines, treatments and testing kits against COVID-19.
“These new tools will help us to fully control the pandemic and must be treated as global public goods available and affordable for all,” the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the start of a global pledging conference which aims to raise at least 8 billion dollars for the fight against the coronavirus.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the same event: “The ultimate measure of success will not be how fast we can develop tools. It will be how equally we can distribute them. None of us can accept a world in which some people are protected while others remain exposed.”
"This virus will be with us for a long time and we must come together to develop and share the tools to defeat it," he said.
"We will prevail through national unity and global solidarity," he added, praising pledges of $8 billion from world leaders for the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The Geneva-based body will launch this week its updated strategic preparedness and response plan, which will provide an update of its funding needs in order to support the international and national plans to fight the virus, Tedros said.
The WHO's top emergencies expert, Mike Ryan, said the organization welcomed recent clinical trial data for Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir drug, saying "there are signals of hope there for the potential use of the drug" in COVID-19 patients.
Many countries are easing lockdown restrictions to resurrect economies and contact-tracing apps are expected to play a role in helping identify new cases and contain clusters.
Ryan stressed that contact-tracing apps and other technology cannot replace old-fashioned "boots-on-the-ground" surveillance measures as many countries begin easing lockdowns imposed to curb the new coronavirus.
"We are very, very keen to stress that IT tools do not replace the basic public health workforce that is going to be needed to trace, test, isolate and quarantine," the WHO's top emergencies expert, Mike Ryan, told journalists at an online briefing in Geneva.
He stressed the need for "shoe-leather epidemiology" and praised the success of places like South Korea and Singapore for their strategy.
