AT BIDEN’S SUMMIT, NATIONS PLEDGE COVID AID
Virtual gathering’s attendees worry fatigue is setting in
President Joe Biden and other leaders issued an urgent call Thursday for the world to step up its fight against COVID-19, and countries including Germany, Canada and Japan pledged large sums to finance tests, therapeutics and vaccines — a commitment Biden could not make because Congress has not authorized new pandemic aid.
As the United States approached a harrowing milestone — 1 million American lives lost to the virus — fear of another variant loomed large over the president’s second global COVID-19 summit, a virtual gathering co-hosted by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal. But some countries were notably absent. China, in the thick of its own COVID crisis, did not attend. Russia, waging war against Ukraine, was not invited.
Senior Biden administration officials said the summit produced more than $3 billion in commitments toward the global response and toward efforts to prevent future pandemics. That is far short of the $15 billion that the World Health Organization says is needed. But the summit did lay the groundwork for a new global preparedness fund.
The gathering Thursday unfolded in a very different
climate compared with that of the first COVID summit in September. The war in Ukraine is sapping energy and money from donor nations. The global vaccination campaign has stalled. Testing has plummeted around the globe. COVID antiviral pills, available in the United States, are scarce in many low- and middle-income nations. Many attendees said COVID fatigue had become as big a danger as COVID itself.
“There’s still so much left to do; this pandemic isn’t over,” Biden said in his opening remarks, adding, “We have to prevent complacency.”
But the president’s tone was tepid when compared with some of the other participants, who included heads of state, global health officials and philanthropic leaders. Several, including Dr. Joy St. John, the executive
director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency, said that climate change was speeding up the cycle of pandemics, making the next outbreak inevitable.
“The next virus may kill even more people and cause even greater economic disruption,” she warned.
Bill Gates, whose foundation has donated tens of millions of dollars to pandemic relief efforts — and who tested positive for the coronavirus this week — railed against global health inequities.
“We need to make more lifesaving tools and allocate them based on need rather than wealth,” Gates declared, adding, “We don’t have time to waste.”
Before the summit began, Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House and all federal buildings and military installations until Monday in commemoration of the nation’s death toll.
As of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had reported more than 995,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States; a New York Times database put the figure at more than 997,000.
Globally, the World Health Organization has said that nearly 15 million more people died during the first two years of the pandemic than would have been expected during normal times. That estimate far exceeds the COVID death toll reported by countries.
Despite the gloomy predictions, summit participants did report some progress. Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told attendees that in Ghana, the percentage of eligible people fully vaccinated doubled between December and April and now stands at 25 percent.
“Now is not the time to back down; it is the time to push ahead,” she said, “even if this fight may drag on longer than any of us want.”
The United States, which has committed $19 billion to the global response, did not come entirely empty-handed. The Biden administration is putting forth a relatively small amount of money at the meeting: $200 million for the World Bank fund to prepare for future pandemics and $20 million for projects to bring tests and treatments to poor nations.