World leaders due to launch COVID-19 drugs, vaccine plan: WHO
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[April 24, 2020]
GENEVA (Reuters) - French President
Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will help launch a
global initiative on Friday to accelerate work on drugs, tests and
vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the world, the World
Health Organization said.
The WHO said late on Thursday it would to announce a "landmark
collaboration" on Friday to speed development of safe, effective drugs,
tests and vaccines to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19.
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a U.N. briefing on Friday that Macron
and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would take part
in the 1300 GMT announcement, led by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus.
British foreign minister Dominic Raab and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres are also to take part, diplomatic sources told Reuters.
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"Today is a kind of political commitment from all these partners to make
sure that when we have all these new tools no one is left behind, that
those who can afford vaccines or therapeutics can buy them and (put)
them at the disposal of the population," Chaib said.
"It is very important to make sure that you have equitable access to
quality, efficient, new tools for COVID-19," she said.
More than 2.7 million people have been infected with the disease, which
has claimed nearly 190,000 lives since emerging in the central Chinese
city of Wuhan late last year, according to a Reuters tally.
More than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including
six already in clinical trials, said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI
vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership that leads immunisation
campaigns in poor countries.
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![](../images/042420pics/news_m27.jpg)
Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference on the situation of
the coronavirus (COVID-2019), in Geneva, Switzerland, February 28,
2020. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo/File Photo
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"We need to ensure that there are enough vaccines for everyone, we
are going to need global leadership to identify and prioritise
vaccine candidates," he told a separate Geneva news briefing before
taking part in the formal WHO announcement.
Global manufacturing capacity must be ramped up ahead of choosing "a
winner" vaccine, Berkley said, noting that GAVI and the World Bank
were looking at the issue.
"We can't have a repeat of what happened in 2009, the H1N1 vaccine,
when there was not enough supply for developing countries or when
supply did come it came much later," he said.
Another important questions was how well a vaccine would work in
people most at risk from COVID-19, Berkley said.
"How well do they work in the elderly, are they single or multiple
dose etc?" he said, noting that older people had weaker immune
systems.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Michael Shields in
Zurich; writing by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Nick Macfie)
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