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Updated: September 27, 2020 5:57:14 pm
Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaks in a pre-recorded message heard during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Saturday, September 26, 2020, at the UN Headquarters. (Photo: UNTV via AP)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made special reference to India’s role in manufacturing and accessing one of the most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates currently undergoing trials during his speech to the General Assembly of the United States. United Nations (UN).
Referring to the vaccine that Oxford University is working on, Johnson emphasized the importance of equitable access to any successful vaccine because the health of every country depends on everyone having access to a safe and effective vaccine, wherever it is. breakthrough occurs. .
“As I speak, there are 100 potential vaccines that are trying to overcome safety and efficacy hurdles, as in a giant global obstacle course,” Johnson said in a prerecorded address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday.
CLOCK: My address to @A General Assembly https://t.co/Xy4pr9LRT4
– Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 26, 2020
“The Oxford vaccine is now in Stage 3 of clinical trials and, if successful, AstraZeneca has already started manufacturing millions of doses, in preparation for rapid distribution, and they have reached an agreement with the Serum Institute of India to supply one billion doses. to low- and middle-income countries, ”he said.
Johnson stated that “humanity was caught napping” when the pandemic hit and has been “struggling to catch up” ever since, Johnson issued a vigorous defense of the World Health Organization as the only body organizing humanity. against legions of diseases and confirmed greater investment that would make the UK the largest state donor to the UN health agency if the departure of US President Donald Trump from the multilateral body takes place next year.
He called for greater international collaboration to fight a common enemy like the virus and urged countries to cross borders and repair “nasty fissures” and “heal the world.”
“And after nine months of fighting COVID-19, the very notion of the international community seems, quite frankly, quite tattered. And we know that we just can’t continue this way. Unless we act together, ”he said.
“That’s why we in the UK – global Britain – are one of the largest global funders of that organization, contributing 340 million pounds over the next four years, that’s a 30 percent increase,” he said. Johnson.
The largest single donor to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness efforts to find a vaccine and a contribution of up to 571 million pounds to COVAX, a new initiative designed to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine around the world, was among some from the other UK countries. initiatives that Johnson sought to highlight in his speech.
He also asked for honesty to come to a joint understanding of how the pandemic started and how it could spread as a “moral imperative”, indicating that he did not intend to point the finger at China.
“Not because I want to blame any country or government, or score points. I just believe, as a former COVID patient, that we all have a right to know, so that we can collectively do everything we can to prevent a recurrence, “he said.
“And now that we dispatch our medical detectives to interview witnesses and suspects, bats, pangolins, whoever, we should be humble enough to recognize that the alarm bells were ringing before this calamity struck,” he said.
Describing the pandemic as an “immense psychic shock” to the human race, he declared that it was outrageous that such a “microscopic enemy” had destroyed the unity of the human race and condemned the perverse classification of death figures in different regions of the world. . .
“COVID-19 has caused us to cease other vital work, and I’m afraid it made individual nations appear selfish and divided from one another. Every day people were openly encouraged to study a creepy reverse olympic league table and feel morbid and totally wrong with the greatest sufferings of others, ”she said.
“We cannot continue like this, we cannot make these mistakes again,” he concluded.
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