U.S. President Joe Biden will meet (NYT) with foreign leaders and representatives of drug companies in a virtual summit today that aims to secure commitments to vaccinate 70 percent of the world against COVID-19 by September 2022. He is expected to announce the purchase (Bloomberg) of five hundred million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for donation abroad.
Several world leaders decried vaccine inequity (AP) in their speeches at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) yesterday. In the United States, firms such as Pfizer and Moderna have resisted calls to share their production know-how with plants in developing countries. UNGA speeches also emphasized the importance of climate action; Washington said it will double its green funding (WaPo) to developing countries, and Beijing said it will cease financing (SCMP) for coal-fired power plants abroad.
Analysis
“[Biden’s summit and 70 percent target] are welcome steps, but the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the W.H.O. set a similar goal months back, and the global vaccine gap has only widened since then,” the New York Times’ Jeneen Interlandi writes.
“Global health security initiatives have been underfunded, even in the midst of epidemics, such as Zika virus in the Americas in 2016. COVID-19 is an opportunity to break free of this inertia, but the movement needs a leader—the United States must fund and coordinate pandemic prevention and preparedness,” Management Sciences for Health’s Ashley Arabasadi and Conservation International’s Pasha Majdi and Neil M. Vora write for Think Global Health.
