Biden pleads for cash as ‘pandemic isn’t over’

Washington – US President Joe Biden warned nations attending Thursday’s virtual global summit on Covid that there was “still so much left to do” to quell the pandemic, as more than $3 billion (about R48.3 billion) in new funding was pledged.

The veteran Democrat may, however, be at pains to spearhead ambitious plans to vaccinate the world and stop the spread of the coronavirus, as Congress has so far refused to authorise billions of dollars in funding.

The US crossed a grim milestone as the summit began, with the White House announcing that more than one million Americans have now died due to Covid, the pandemic’s highest recorded death toll in the world.

In his remarks to the summit, Biden said that while progress had been made on global vaccinations and delivering medical equipment to countries in need, “there’s still so much left to do. This pandemic isn’t over”.

“We all must do more. We must honour those we have lost by doing everything we can to prevent as many deaths as possible,” he said.

The White House announced that the summit had “garnered new financial commitments totalling more than $3 billion in new funding... above and beyond pledges made to date in 2022”.

More than $2 billion of that total will go towards “immediate” Covid response, while $962 million has been committed to a World Bank fund for pandemic preparedness and global health security. The US pledged another $200 million to that fund, raising its contribution to $450 million. “We want to prevent complacency,” a senior US official said.

The US government came to the session hobbled by an inability to secure even its own funding.

Biden has requested another $22.5 billion in emergency Covid money, but preliminary agreement was reached in the legislature on spending just $10 billion.