During the G7 Summit over the weekend, leaders and representatives worked on several measures covering commitments on the Covid pandemic and global health, committing to using all their resources to prevent a global pandemic from ever happening again.
Covid recovery
G7 leaders are pledging more than one billion coronavirus vaccine doses - either directly or through funding to COVAX – including 100 million from the UK, to the world’s poorest countries – which is another big step towards vaccinating the world.
This is in addition to everything scientists, governments and the pharmaceutical industry have done so far to roll out one of the largest vaccination programmes in history across the globe.
It is also important to mention the role of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine – the world’s most popular vaccine, which was developed in the UK and has now provided protection for over half a billion people so far and was funded by the UK Government.
The UK, along with the fellow G7 members, are committed to continue leading the global response to this Covid-19 pandemic and ensuring everyone can receive a vaccine across the globe.
Carbis Bay Declaration on Health
Furthermore, leaders of the G7 and guest countries agreed to the landmark Carbis Bay Declaration on health, where G7 leaders committed to using all their resources to prevent a global pandemic from ever happening again, setting out a series of concrete commitments to prevent any repeat of the human and economic devastation wreaked by coronavirus.
This declaration incorporates the recommendations of the independent report on the ‘100 Days Mission to Respond to Future Pandemic Threats’, which contains actionable recommendations on how governments and others can quickly respond to any future outbreaks.
These include slashing the time taken to develop and licence vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for any future disease to under 100 days, a commitment to reinforce global surveillance networks and genomic sequencing capacity and support for reforming and strengthening the World Health Organization.
To stop new animal-borne diseases before they put people at risk, the UK will establish a UK Animal Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at The Pirbright Institute in Surrey.
This follows the Prime Minister’s announcement last month that the UK had launched plans for a global ‘pandemic radar’ to identify emerging COVID-19 variants and track new diseases around the world. Today he will ask for G7 support for the Global Pandemic Radar, which will protect domestic vaccine programmes against new vaccine-resistant variants by identifying them early and before they are able to spread.
The G7 is uniquely well-placed to lead global efforts in pandemic prevention – the group is home to two-thirds of the world’s pharmaceutical market and the four coronavirus vaccines licenced for use in the UK were all developed in G7 nations (the UK, US and Germany).