After the WHO, the UN Security Council launched an appeal on Wednesday February 17 to coordinate a global effort to vaccinate against Covid-19.

According to the organ, the gaping inequalities in the initial efforts put the entire planet at risk.

The warning comes as the European Union announced an agreement to acquire 300 million additional doses of the Moderna vaccine.

During a rare ministerial videoconference of the Security Council devoted to health, an area not usually the responsibility of this body, several countries called for more unity.

"The world urgently needs a global immunization plan to bring together all those who have the power, the scientific expertise and the production and financial capacities required," said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

"The G20 (bringing together the twenty most powerful economies on the planet) is well placed to establish an emergency working group responsible for preparing such a global immunization plan and coordinating its implementation and financing," he said. he added, believing that the G7, a summit of which is scheduled for Friday, "can create the momentum necessary to mobilize financial resources".

Among the 15 members of the Security Council are the largest vaccine producers: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and India.

Several foreign ministers, such as Chinese Wang Yi, called for "more solidarity and cooperation".

If the latter "welcomed" the organization of the session, Russia, simply represented by its ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia, considered that a debate on vaccines fell under "specialized UN structures" and "exceeded the competences of the Security Council ".

"We must see ourselves as a team working together against a common and very deadly enemy," however stressed the British Foreign Minister, Dominic Raab, President-in-Office of the Security Council and organizer of the session.

"We are fighting against a global pandemic" and "there must not be those left behind," he insisted.

"If the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire in the countries of the South, it will mutate again and again" with "new, more transmissible, more deadly variants which will potentially threaten the effectiveness of the vaccines", also warned the head of the UN.

"This can greatly prolong the pandemic, allowing the virus to return to ravage the North," he said.

Three hundred million more doses for the EU

On the same day, in Brussels, the European Union announced an agreement to purchase 300 million additional doses of the Moderna vaccine against Covid-19.

This agreement covers the purchase of 150 million doses of the vaccine from the American laboratory Moderna, intended for delivery in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2021, with an option of 150 million additional doses in 2022.

With this new order, the EU should have 310 million doses of the Moderna vaccine this year, which on January 8 was the second to be approved by the European regulator, after that of the German-American duo BioNTech / Pfizer.

Criticized for vaccine failures, the Commission also unveiled a plan to better monitor coronavirus mutations.

Called the Hera Incubator, this project will be endowed with 75 million euros.

Some 150 million additional euros will be committed to strengthen research.

"Unequal and unjust progress"

At the UN headquarters, the head of the organization denounced "progress in immunization extremely uneven and unjust".

"Only ten countries have administered 75% of all Covid-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, more than 130 countries have not received a single dose," he lamented.

The head of Mexican diplomacy, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, also attacked an "injustice" and "an increasingly deep divide" between a few rich countries which "monopolize the vaccines" and the others.

Among the speakers, Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that "mistrust kills".

"When science is not only ignored but ridiculed, when the decision to wear masks becomes controversial and the web is filled with absurd rumors, confidence in the massive efforts being made to stop the pandemic is seriously compromised," a- he said, warning those who would refuse a vaccination.

Henrietta Fore, director of the UN agency Unicef, affirmed that "in this historic effort, we must include the millions of people who are living or fleeing conflict and instability".

According to Dominic Raab, it is "more than 160 million people".

He announced the submission to the UN of a draft resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire in conflict zones, which London hopes to see adopted soon.

Last year, it took more than three months for the Security Council, blocked by a China-U.S. Rivalry, to pass its first and only resolution to date on the pandemic, which already called for a general ceasefire. to combat the spread of the virus.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar announced that his country would give "200,000 doses" to the estimated 100,000 peacekeepers (two doses per person) deployed around the world, while his American counterpart Antony Blinken said that the United States was going to pay, before the end of February, more than 200 million dollars to the World Health Organization (WHO).

(With AFP)

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