Countries back UN plan to speed rollout of virus response

GENEVA—World

leaders rallied around the United Nations on Friday for an initiative to help the most vulnerable countries gain access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatment tools for the coronavirus as soon as they emerge.

The show of unity for the UN and the World Health Organization to speed up development and deployment of tools against the pandemic comes as the Trump administration has criticized the WHO’s response to the outbreak, and vowed to cut generous U.S. funding for it.

“This is a landmark collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics for COVID-19,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, hosting a parade of leaders by video conference. “Our shared commitment is to ensure all people have access to all the tools to defeat COVID-19.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said Italy was “grateful” to the WHO, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa praised Tedros’ “leadership” and Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin of Malaysia hailed the UN as among the “most powerful modalities” to meet challenges posed by the pandemic.

“We firmly believe that solidarity and multilateralism are the only way forward,” said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain, which like Italy and France have been among the hardest-hit countries.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the effort to rid the world of COVID-19 “requires the most massive public health effort in history.”