Thread by @WHO

LIVE with @DrTedros from the #Aid4Trade High-level Plenary Session ⬇️

https://twitter.com/wto/status/1374345932322447371

"Thank you, my sister @NOIweala, for prioritising this important stocktake to address the ongoing economic and health consequences of the #COVID19 pandemic on global trade"-@DrTedros at the #Aid4Trade High-level Plenary Session

#ACTogether

"More than 122 million cases of #COVID19 have now been reported to WHO, and more than 2.7 million people have lost their lives. But as you know, the impacts of the pandemic go far beyond the death and disease caused by the virus itself"-@DrTedros #Aid4Trade

"Millions of people have lost their livelihood.

The 🌍 economy is in recession.

🌍 trade continues to be disrupted.

The 🌍 rollout of vaccines is giving us hope of bringing #COVID19 under control, but we still have a long way to go & many challenges to overcome"-@DrTedros

"Since the beginning of the #COVID19 pandemic, we have known that vaccines would be a vital tool for controlling it. But we also knew from experience that market forces alone would not deliver the equitable distribution of vaccines"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"In total, #COVAX has now delivered 32+M doses of #COVID19 vaccine to 57 countries & economies. We expect to deliver a total of 237M vaccines between now and May. Still, the rollout of vaccines has not been as equitable as we would have liked"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"🌍, 459M doses of vaccine have been administered, but 76% of those are in just 10 countries. The success of #COVAX is at risk because of the demands that some high- & upper-middle income countries are putting on the 🌍 supply of vaccines"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"#VaccinEquity is not an act of charity; it’s the best and fastest way to control the #COVID19 pandemic globally, and to reboot the global economy. Vaccine equity is in every nation’s interest"-@DrTedros #Aid4Trade

"Every day, we are engaged in discussions with manufacturers and leaders of countries at all income levels, exploring ways to ramp up the production and equitable distribution of #COVID19 vaccines"-@DrTedros #Aid4Trade

"We see 4⃣ main ways to do this.

The 1⃣ and most short-term approach is to connect #COVID19 vaccine manufacturers with other companies who have excess capacity to fill and finish, to speed up production and increase volumes"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"The 2⃣ is bilateral technology transfer, through voluntary licensing from a company that owns the patents on a #COVID19 vaccine to another company that can produce them, as AstraZeneca has done with SKBio in 🇰🇷 & the Serum Institute of 🇮🇳"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"Critically, bilateral tech transfer must include provisions for affordability and equity, which has unfortunately not always been the case with some of the vaccine deals done so far"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1374358394912530434?s=20

"The 3⃣ approach is coordinated technology transfer & licensing, through a 🌍 mechanism coordinated by WHO, which we have established through C-TAP. This provides more transparency & a more coherent 🌍 approach that contributes to regional health security"-@DrTedros #Aid4Trade

"And 4⃣, waiving intellectual property rights, as proposed by South Africa and India, is a mid- to long-term solution that could help countries with #COVID19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to start moving towards producing their own vaccines"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"The TRIPS Agreement was designed, as you know, to allow for flexibility on intellectual property rights in the case of emergencies. If now is not the time to use those flexibilities, then when is? This is an unprecedented situation"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"The #COVID19 pandemic will subside, but there will be another one. And countries will continue to face myriad health challenges that sap productivity, fuel inequality, and hold nations back"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade

"We can only truly respond and recover if we think of health not as a cost, but as an investment in the safer, fairer and more prosperous world we all want"-@DrTedros #VaccinEquity #Aid4Trade