December 17th local time, United Nations Secretary-General Guterres visited Berlin, Germany, and held a meeting with German Federal Foreign Minister Mass. At the subsequent joint press conference, he called on the international community to work together to promote global equity in the reach of vaccines.
Guterres stressed at the press conference that it is necessary to ensure equitable access to the coronavirus vaccine for everyone and every place, especially to ensure its accessibility and affordability in developing countries. Otherwise, developed countries will not be able to effectively prevent and control the epidemic – because “once the virus changes when the disease is not eradicated. Different, which may cause the vaccine to no longer be effective.”
He pointed out that the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic must be through international cooperation, not nationalism, so more economic support should be provided to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
According to Guterres, the league’s funding gap will exceed $5 billion by the end of January next year. At the same time, an additional $20 billion is urgently needed to continue to advance the relevant work.
In his view, the COVID-19 vaccine guarantee mechanism initiated by the World Health Organization allows countries to share safe and effective vaccines fairly. Given that some countries have purchased far more vaccines than their own population, it is “especially necessary” to provide surplus vaccines to the coronavirus vaccine safeguard mechanism, which can benefit developing countries from it.
At the same time, Guterres believes that since vaccination is not mandatory, it is necessary to raise public trust in the coronavirus vaccine in order to combat the mass-hyped vaccine boycott campaign on social media.
