Biden, world leaders issue urgent call to step up pandemic fight

WASHINGTON • US President Joe Biden and other leaders have issued an urgent call for the world to step up its fight against Covid-19, and countries including Germany, Canada and Japan pledged large sums to finance tests, therapeutics and vaccines - a commitment Mr Biden could not make because Congress has refused to authorise new pandemic aid.

Fear of another deadly variant loomed large over Mr Biden's second global Covid-19 summit, a virtual gathering co-hosted by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal.

But some countries were notably absent. China, in the thick of its own Covid-19 crisis, did not attend. Russia, waging war against Ukraine, was not invited.

Senior Biden administration officials said the summit produced more than US$3 billion (S$4.2 billion) in commitments towards the global response and towards efforts to prevent future pandemics.

That is far short of the US$15 billion that the World Health Organisation says is needed. But the summit did lay the groundwork for a new global preparedness fund.

The gathering on Thursday unfolded in a very different climate compared with the first Covid-19 summit last September.

The war in Ukraine is sapping energy and money from donor nations. The global vaccination campaign has stalled. Testing has plummeted around the globe. Covid-19 antiviral pills are scarce in many low-and middle-income nations.

Many attendees said Covid-19 fatigue had become as big a danger as Covid-19 itself.

"There's still so much left to do; this pandemic isn't over," Mr Biden said in his opening remarks, adding that "we have to prevent complacency".

But his tone was tepid compared with that of some of the other participants, who included heads of state, global health officials and philanthropic leaders.

Several, including Dr Joy St John, executive director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency, said climate change was speeding up the cycle of pandemics, making the next outbreak inevitable. "The next virus may kill even more people and cause even greater economic disruption," she warned.

Mr Bill Gates, a software entrepreneur and philanthropist whose foundation has donated tens of millions of dollars to pandemic relief efforts - and who tested positive for the coronavirus this week - railed against global health inequities. "We need to make more lifesaving tools and allocate them based on need rather than wealth," he declared, adding: "We don't have time to waste."

Mr Biden on Thursday marked the rapidly approaching milestone of one million US deaths from Covid-19 by calling on lawmakers to provide fresh funding for testing and treatments, saying the country "must not grow numb to such sorrow".

He ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House and all public buildings and military installations until Monday in commemoration of the nation's death toll.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention pegged the toll at 996,376 as at yesterday.

"Today, we're at a new stage in fighting this pandemic, facing an evolving set of challenges. We have to double down on our efforts to get shots in people's arms, country by country, community by community," said Mr Biden.

He renewed a call for Congress to approve a new round of funding, both to order vaccines, tests and treatments for domestic use and to fuel the global campaign, including by paying to speed up administration of vaccines that are piling up, unused.

NYTIMES, BLOOMBERG