By Spy Correspondent
Geneva: A World Health Organization-led coalition fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is asking government and private sector donors to help raise $31.3 billion in the next 12 months to develop and deliver tests, treatments and vaccines for the disease.
Renewing its call on Friday for global collaboration against the pandemic, it said $3.4 billion had been contributed for the coalition to date, leaving a funding gap of $27.9 billion. Of that, $13.7 billion was “urgently needed”.
The WHO is working with a large coalition of drug-development, funding and distribution organisations under what it calls the ACT-Accelerator Hub.
“The principle of equitable access is a simple thing to say, but a complicated thing to implement,” WHO direct general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday. “
Tedros added that Vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics are vital tools – but to be truly effective they must be administered with another essential ingredient, which requires active collaboration between governments, industry, health organizations, civil society organizations, and communities.
The initiative is intended to develop and deliver 500 million COVID-19 tests and 245 million courses of new treatment for the disease to low- and middle-income countries by mid-2021, it said in a statement.
It also hoping 2 billion vaccines doses, including 1 billion to be bought by low- and middle-income countries, will be available by the end of 2021.
This comes at a time when Uganda has registered 833 COVID-19 cases in total after the Ministry of Health confirmed twelve (12) new cases as a result of 2,113 samples tested on 25, June, 2020.
According to the Ministry, all confirmed cases are Ugandans and among these, Two (2) cases were among 1,413 samples tested from Points of Entry while ten (10) were among 700 samples of alerts and contacts.
However, a total of twenty-five (25) foreign truck drivers (15 Kenyans, 9 Tanzanians and 1 Congolese) tested positive for COVID-19 and were handed over to their respective country of origin.
Details Of The New Cases:
- Two (02) of the confirmed cases are truck drivers who arrived from Kenya via Malaba Point of Entry.
- Ten (10) of the confirmed cases are alerts and contacts to previously confirmed cases; Four (4) from Amuru, two (2) from Kyotera, two (2) from Luwero, one (1) from Buikwe and one (1) from Tororo Districts.
According to the latest figures published by Johns Hopkins University few minutes ago, 9,641,472 cases have been detected worldwide, with 489,990 deaths and 4,865,058 people have recovered.
In Africa, South Africa remains on top with 118,375 cases and 2,292 deaths, Nigeria has 22,614 cases with 549 deaths and Ghana takes third position with 15,473 cases and 95 deaths.
