WHO has announced that the cost to end the COVID-19 is around $32 billion (RM145 billion). The cost included the effort to make 2 billion vaccines, 245 million treatments, and 500 million lab tests. The price will keep increasing until we found the vaccine.
The news came out after an inaugural meeting of the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator Facilitation Council. ACT is a global collaboration that aims to fasten the production, access to experiment, treatment, and vaccine for COVID-19 around the globe.
Launched on April 24 by WHO with the European Commission, France, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with support from the UN Secretary-General and multiple heads of Government.
It said that as much as ten volunteers had taken the COVID-19 vaccine, nine of them has been sent to clinical trials. It is also said that investing in the ACT multilateral approach could increase the chance of success for all countries. This gives access to a greater number of tools more quickly, as well as sharing the costs, and mitigating the risk of research and development.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said, “Nearly 5,000 lives are lost each day due to Covid-19 and the global economy is expected to contract by trillions of dollars this year. The case for investing to end the pandemic has never been stronger.”
“The ACT Accelerator is the best way to ensure equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, but at present is facing a financing gap of US$35 billion. Fully financing the ACT-Accelerator would shorten the pandemic and pay back this investment rapidly as the global economy recovers,” he added.
Source: Daily Star