“The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it,” declared the WHO Director-General.

The General Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said today that the coronavirus pandemic will end when the world decides, while urging a fair distribution of vaccines.

“The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it. It’s in our hands. We have all the tools we need: effective public health tools and effective medical tools ”, he stated during the inauguration of the World Health Summit that starts today in Berlin.

He criticized, however, that the world “has not used these tools well” and warned that with almost 50,000 deaths a week, not counting the unreported cases, “the pandemic is far from over.”

He noted that the established goal of vaccinating 40% of the population of each country by the end of this year can be achieved, but under certain conditions.

Thus, he asked all states with at least 40% of the vaccinated population to “give up their place in the vaccine distribution queue” to the COVAX mechanism and the African Fund for the Acquisition of Vaccines (AVAT), promoted by the WHO and the African Union (AU, respectively.

In addition, he urged producers to prioritize and fulfill their commitments to COVAX and AVAT, to greater transparency about the destination of vaccines and to share knowledge, technologies and licenses and to waive intellectual property rights.

“If we do this, we can end the pandemic and accelerate the global recovery,” he said, while underscoring the need to strengthen today’s complex and fragmented global healthcare architecture to prevent this from happening again.

In this sense, he considered that the time has come for a legally binding international preparedness and response agreement or treaty.

At the same time, he appealed to the need for more financing to solve an “insufficient, inefficient and unequal” ecosystem.

“Nationalism in vaccination and the hoarding of vaccines puts us all in danger,” warned the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, in a video message for the opening of the 13th edition of the summit.

The triumph of vaccines and the tragedy of their unequal distribution

According to Guterres, the “triumph of vaccines, developed and commercialized in record time”, has been overshadowed by the “tragedy of uneven distribution”.

Like Tedros, he called on countries and producers to fulfill their commitments and share knowledge and underlined the need for an architecture that prevents the mistakes that are being made now from being repeated.

“Covid-19 will not be the last pandemic we face, but it may be the last we fail,” he said, adding that it is “essential” to increase the resources and authority of the WHO.

The president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, pointed out that “global cooperation is vital” and added that in recent months politicians and citizens have understood that “only national solutions are not enough to fight a pandemic ”.

“Cross-border health threats need cross-border responses,” he said, underscoring the need to improve preparedness and capacity to respond to health crises globally.

The founder and former president of the World Health Summit, Detlev Ganten, for his part, announced the creation of the Virchow Prize for Global Health, to which individuals and organizations that have contributed significantly to improving global health and whose first winner will be announced in next year’s edition.

From today until Tuesday, the summit brings together 380 speakers both in person in Berlin and virtually, and around six thousand participants from all over the world.

Among the main topics of this edition are global strategies for the prevention and containment of pandemics, the role of Germany, Europe and the WHO in global health, justice in vaccination and climate change. (I)