U.N. calls for COVID vaccine, treatment available for all

United Nations leaders called on Monday for a global effort to develop and distribute to all at affordable prices vaccines, treatments and testing kits against COVID-19.

“These new tools will help us to fully control the pandemic and must be treated as global public goods available and affordable for all,” the U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres said at the start of a global pledging conference which aims to raise at least 8 billion dollars for the fight against the coronavirus.

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the same event: “The ultimate measure of success will not be how fast we can develop tools. It will be how equally we can distribute them. None of us can accept a world in which some people are protected while others remain exposed.”