WHO Urges Rich Countries to Pay Up for Covid Plan

The WHO urged rich countries Wednesday to pay their fair share of the money needed for its plan to conquer Covid-19 by urgently contributing $16 billion.

The World Health Organization said the rapid cash injection into its Access to Covid Tools Accelerator could finish off Covid as a global health emergency this year.

The WHO-led ACT-A is aimed at developing, producing, procuring and distributing tools to tackle the pandemic: namely vaccines, tests, treatments and personal protective equipment.

ACT-A gave birth to the Covax facility, designed to ensure poorer countries could access eventual vaccines, correctly predicting that richer nations would hog doses.

Covax delivered its billionth vaccine dose in mid-January.

ACT-A needed $23.4 billion for its programme for the October 2021-September 2022 period, but only $800 million has been raised so far.

The scheme therefore wants $16 billion up front from wealthy nations "to close the immediate financing gap", with the rest to be self-funded by middle-income countries.