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The United States will not participate in a global project to develop, produce and distribute coronavirus vaccines, in part because the World Health Organization (WHO) plays a leadership role, The Washington Post reports.
United States: President Donald Trump.
More than 170 countries are participating in the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) project, which was created to accelerate the development of effective vaccines and ensure a uniform and equitable distribution around the world. The European Commission, Germany, Japan and several other US allies are on board, but the White House believes the Geneva-based WHO is too China-focused, something that previously led Trump to withdraw funding from Washington. from the UN agency.
“The United States will continue to work with international partners to ensure we overcome this virus, but we do not pretend to be bound by multilateral organizations under the influence of the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
If a non-American manufacturer catches up with the US to develop a vaccine that works, Americans will initially risk running out of it, several experts now warn.
“America is taking a huge risk with this do-it-yourself strategy,” said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University.
More than 25 million cases of Covid-19 have been diagnosed worldwide, according to a compilation by Johns Hopkins University. More than 850,000 people have died in the world, of which some 185,000 in the United States.
For some time, several pharmaceutical companies, including the Swedish-British Astra Zeneca, have been conducting clinical trials. However, there is no approved vaccine yet, with the exception of a Russian one, which was approved without large-scale studies, which is generally a prerequisite for a preparation to be considered safe.
