UN Calls for $23 billion to Eliminate Covid-19 Pandemic This year

In a bid to end the awful pandemic as a global emergency this year, the United Nations (UN) has launched a new campaign that aims to meet a $16 billion financing gap and nearly $7 billion for in-country delivery costs.

The new campaign will support measures that include driving vaccine rollouts, creating a Pandemic Vaccine Pool of 600 million doses, purchasing 700 million tests, procuring treatments for 120 million patients, and 100 percent of the oxygen needs of low-income countries. According to the UN, the co-chairs of the ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council, which provides high-level political leadership to advocate for resource mobilization, recently wrote to more than 50 rich countries to encourage “fair share” contributions.

The financing framework is calculated on the size of their national economies and what they would gain from a faster global economic and trade recovery.

“If we want to ensure vaccinations for everyone to end this pandemic, we must first inject fairness into the system,” the UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted.

Mr. Guterres also said that vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times – and people are paying the price, underlining the urgency to act now.

The UN Secretary-General insisted: “Until and unless we can ensure access to these tools, the pandemic will not go away, and the sense of insecurity of people will only deepen.”