Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and thank you for the opportunity of joining you today.
First of all, I would like to thank China for organizing today’s event.
As you know, the world is in the grip of a global vaccine crisis.
There is no doubt that the development and rollout of several safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19, less than a year after the first reported cases, is a stunning scientific achievement, and a much-needed source of hope for bringing the pandemic under control.
But there remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines. This has created a two-track pandemic, divided between the haves and the have-nots.
Over 4 billion vaccines have been administered globally, but more than 75% of those have gone to just ten countries, often secured through bilateral deals that have bypassed COVAX.
Vaccine inequity is not only a moral failure, it is also epidemiologically and economically self-defeating.
The more people who remain unprotected globally, the more opportunity the virus has to spread, and the more opportunity it has to evolve into potentially more dangerous variants.
WHO’s global targets are to vaccinate at least 10% of the population of every country by September, at least 40% by the end of the year, and 70% of the world’s population by mid-next year.
To reach these critical milestones, we need more than 11 billion doses of vaccine.
Urgent dose sharing is vital to fill our current supply gap. We call on countries that have already vaccinated their adult populations to donate doses now.
WHO is very grateful for President Xi’s announcement that China will contribute US$100 million to COVAX, for immediate use. Thank you for this very generous contribution, which will help to save lives around the world.
At the same time, WHO is working to support low- and middle-income countries to strengthen their capacity to roll out vaccines effectively and efficiently when they arrive.
But we still have a lot of work to do. We need to dramatically scale up the number of vaccines being produced for lower-income countries.
This can be done by removing the barriers to scaling up manufacturing, including through technology transfer, freeing up supply chains, and IP waivers.
I want to emphasise that WHO values the intellectual property system, which plays a vital role in fostering innovation of new tools to save lives.
But this pandemic is an unprecedented crisis that demands unprecedented action. With so many lives on the line, profits and patents must come second.
We cannot defeat this virus one country at a time. We can only do it with a coordinated global effort, based on the principles of solidarity, equity and sharing.
I thank you.