With preparations for the G7 summit in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland next week, high on the agenda is how to end the COVID-19 pandemic and secure a global recovery. We face urgent challenges.
Impressive progress has been made on vaccination. Scientists have come up with multiple vaccines in record time. Unprecedented public and private funding support vaccine research, development, and manufacturing. But there is still a serious gap between rich and poor countries.
In fact, even at the time, low-income countries are the most served and have received less than one percent of the vaccines given so far.
So today we are calling for a new level of international support - and implementation - of an intensely coordinated strategy, backed by new funding, to vaccinate the world.