The funding directed to the Accelerated Access to Tools against Covid-19 (ACT-Accelerator) project would provide tests, treatments, vaccines and personal protective equipment to low- and middle-income nations, the entity said in a statement.

The total amount of the initiative is 23.4 billion dollars, but the WHO foresees that the difference between this and the support of the rich States will be contributed by the medium ones, as detailed in the statement, calling the proposal a “fair participation”.

The WHO indicated that more than 4.7 billion tests have been administered globally to detect the Covid-19 since the emergence of the pandemic. However, low-income countries have only used around 22 million tests, which represents 0.4 percent of the overall figure.

The WHO also warned that only 10 percent of people in low-income nations received at least one dose of vaccine against the disease.

“This inequity not only costs lives, it harms economies and allows the risk of new and more dangerous variants to persist that would rob current tools of their effectiveness and set even highly immunized populations back for many months,” it stated.

Closing the gap between States will allow the creation of a 600 million-dose pool of drugs against the pandemic, support community participation and cover the ancillary costs of donations, and would contribute to national vaccination goals towards the global goal of 70 percent coverage in each country by the middle of this year, the WHO stressed.

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