World Health Organization said that Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests will require more than $30 billion in 2021.
On Friday, the World Health Organization said the global initiative to speed up the production and development of the Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests will require more than 30 billion dollars over the next year. While providing details of Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator that was launched in April that aimed at amalgamating international resources to fight with a pandemic, World Health Organization said “the costed plans presented today call for $31.3 billion in funding”.
United Nation health agency said while pointing out that an additional 27.9 billion dollars along with 3.4 billion dollars were required over the next 12 months that includes 14 billion dollars in order to cover immediate requirements.
The announcement regarding Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests came ahead of a major pledging event in Brussels in support of the ACT accelerator, set to take place on Saturday.
ACT accelerator for Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests
The WHO is working with a large coalition of drug-development, funding, and distribution organizations of different countries under what it calls the ACT Accelerator.
The initiative is intended to develop and deliver 500 million Covid-19 tests, 2 billion vaccines doses and 245 million courses of a new treatment for the virus to lower and mid income countries by mid-2021, it said in a statement.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a special envoy for the ACT accelerator, told a virtual briefing that this is worth making an investment. “If we don’t rally now, the human costs and the economic pain will deepen, 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. “
“Vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics are vital tools, but to be truly effective they must be administered with another essential ingredient, which is solidarity.”
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