The United States on Thursday called on all countries to help finance the World Bank program intended to prevent future pandemicswithin the framework of the second international summit on covid-19 convened by the Joe Biden Administration.
After the conclave held in September 2021, the United States hosts a second meeting this Thursday, which is also led by Germany, Belize, Indonesia and Senegal.
The two main objectives of this second summit are coordinate efforts to combat covid-19 and design mechanisms to prevent future pandemics.
“The summit will ask countries to invest in the World Bank’s new preparedness funds for a global pandemic and for health security,” a senior US government official explained in a call with reporters.
The same source claimed that it should not be a summit just to talk, but to close “significant commitments” to expand vaccinations and treatments, and prevent new variants of covid-19 and future pandemics of other diseases.
The US government has pledged to donate 1.2 billion doses of vaccines against covid, of which it has already sent 530 million to 115 countries, by far the largest number of donated vaccines in the world.
“We have made great progress since the last summit, but the pandemic is not over and we have to continue to respond and prepare,” the US official explained.
In that sense, he recalled that Biden has asked the US Congress for an additional 22.5 billion dollars to deal with the pandemic, which includes the purchase and donation of vaccines to other countries.
“The virus is not waiting for Congress. We need urgent action and not empty words,” he said.
The appointment will take place while the country is approaching one million deaths from covid-19, and with new infections on the rise. The number of daily deaths, however, maintains a downward trend, with just over 300 deaths per day. average in a nation of nearly 330 million people.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned last week that the total number of deaths in the world from the pandemic could be much higher than currently recorded.
The agency has calculated the excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 at 15 million compared to the number of deaths that should have occurred under normal conditions.
The current number of deaths from covid-19 It is just over 6 million.
Nations such as Spain, France, Canada, Japan or Colombia will participate in the second summit on covid-19; non-governmental organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and various international institutions, such as the WHO, the World Bank or the World Trade Organization.
Russia has not been invited, while China has declined to participate.
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