WHO short of money to combat coronavirus

Reuters

There is a “vast global gap” between funds needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic and funds committed, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday, and the WHO was only “10 percent of the way” there.

More than 19.92 million people have been reported to be infected by the virus globally and 729,883 have died, according to a Reuters tally as of yesterday.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first COVID-19 cases were identified.

“The coming three months present a crucial window of opportunity to scale-up the impact of the ACT Accelerator for global impact,” Tedros told a briefing in Geneva, referring to the “Access to COVID-19 Tools” initiative.

“However to exploit this window, we have to fundamentally scale up the way we are funding the ACT Accelerator and prioritize the use of new tools. There is a vast global gap between our ambition for the ACT Accelerator, and the amount of funds that have been committed.”

He said the WHO was only “10 percent of the way” to funding the billions of dollars required.

“For the vaccines alone, over US$100 billion will be needed,” Tedros said. This sounds like lot of money and it is.

“But it’s small in comparison to the US$10 trillion that have already been invested by G20 countries in fiscal stimulus to deal with the consequences of the pandemic so far.”

However, he said he saw “green shoots of hope.”

“It is never too late to turn the pandemic around,” Tedros said. “This week we’ll reach 20 million registered cases of COVID-19 and 750,000 deaths.”

“Behind these statistics is a great deal of pain and suffering. Every life lost matters. I know many of you are grieving and that this is a difficult moment for the world.

“But I want to be clear: there are green shoots of hope and ... it is never too late to turn the outbreak around.”

Tedros gave examples of countries that had successfully clamped down on the spread of the coronavirus, citing New Zealand and Rwanda.

He also praised Britain and France for taking swift recent measures to tackle new spikes, such as imposing lockdowns around clusters in northern England and making masks compulsory in busy outdoor spaces in Paris.

“My message is crystal clear: suppress, suppress, suppress the virus,” he said.

“If we suppress the virus effectively, we can safely open up societies.”

Dr Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, said the coronavirus was simple, brutal and cruel.

“It’s brutal in its simplicity, it is brutal in its cruelty, but it doesn’t have a brain,” he said.

“We have the brains ... we can outsmart something that doesn’t have a brain but we are not doing such a great job right now.”

Ryan said that Brazil is registering 50,000-60,000 COVID-19 cases per day.

“Brazil is sustaining a very high level of epidemic, the curve is somewhat flattened, but it’s not going down and the health system is under great deal of pressure.”