Nations pledge billions to bolster pandemic response

WASHINGTON President Joe Biden and other leaders issued an urgent call Thursday for the world to intensify 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 refused to authorize new pandemic aid.

As the United States approached a harrowing milestone — 1 million American lives lost to the virus — fear of another deadly variant loomed over the president’s second global COVID-19 summit, a virtual gathering cohosted by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal. But some countries were notably absent. China, in the thick of its own COVID-19 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-19 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-19 antiviral pills, available in the United States, are scarce in many low- and middle-income nations. Many attendees said COVID-19 fatigue had become as big a danger as the virus itself.

“There’s still so much left to do; this pandemic isn’t over,” Biden said.

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 said.

Bill Gates, a software entrepreneur and philanthropist 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 said. “We don’t have time to waste.”