$50 Billion Needed to Tackle Global Pandemic

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Governments of countries must allocate extra money to tackle the corona pandemic worldwide. With that joint call come the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

According to them, about $50 billion in funding is needed to implement a new roadmap, which should, among other things, ensure better distribution of vaccines around the world.

“It has now become abundantly clear that there will be no broad-based recovery without an end to the health crisis. Access to vaccination is key to both,” executives of the organizations said in a statement published in numerous newspapers around the world.

The call is based on recent research by the IMF. This showed that the difference in resources threatens to create a separation between rich and poor countries. However, the world should bet on vaccinations in all countries.

By the end of 2021, at least 40 percent of the population in every country must be vaccinated, according to experts from the IMF. By the middle of next year, this should be 60 percent everywhere, and at the same time sufficient testing must be done, and virus outbreaks must be actively detected through source and contact research.

For all this, 50 billion dollars is needed, the think tank calculated. However, that expenditure could yield $9 trillion if it helps the global economy return to its previous level more quickly. According to the IMF, the potential economic gain is $1 trillion for rich countries, making it “possibly the highest-yielding public investment ever”.

The money should come from donors such as public organizations such as development banks and governments. With the money, Covax, which supplies vaccines to poor countries, should be able to order more vaccines to fix the available production space. Countries must also ensure free trade in raw materials and vaccines produced.

The United Kingdom and the United States, in particular, have recently been accused of vaccine nationalism, but the European Union has also stopped the export of vaccines.