GHTC statement on US Global COVID-19 Summit and commitment to support targets

The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) applauds the US government’s efforts to host a Global COVID-19 Summit on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly next week and calls on heads of state, multilateral and regional bodies, and private-sector and non-governmental leaders to take this moment to take a fresh look at how to tackle the pandemic globally and solve the inequities that have plagued the COVID-19 response the past year and a half.

GHTC is committed to the shared targets of vaccinating the world, saving lives now, and building back better. Within these priorities, we call on summit stakeholders to commit to bolstering global investments in robust surveillance and data sharing, including for genomic sequencing; increased testing and analysis to detect emerging variants; and research and development (R&D), including supporting clinical trials for “wave 2” therapeutic and vaccine candidates as well as increasing regional manufacturing capacities for all medical countermeasures. GHTC also supports the creation of a global health security financial intermediary fund that can be leveraged to mobilize resources for immediate COVID-19 response needs and bolster research, development, and manufacturing capabilities in every region as part of longer-term pandemic preparedness systems strengthening.

GHTC stands ready to convene partners to assess gaps in the upstream R&D aspects of the COVID-19 response, to remove policy barriers, and to enable product developers to advance progress on delivering and deploying technologies fit for purpose for the lowest-resource settings. We are also committed to leveraging our platform to elevate perspectives of national and regional stakeholders from lower- and middle-income countries to ensure global investments in R&D and manufacturing capacity strengthening are driven in a way best suited to strengthening pandemic preparedness in each local context.

Finally, we call for the establishment of a global envoy or focal point to galvanize support and align efforts when a new COVID-19 road map for ending the pandemic is developed, and to ensure accountability and global representation. The global community must come together and hold each other accountable to eliminate every bottleneck slowing down a truly global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. No one is safe until everyone is safe, and tangible collective action is the only way we will meet the targets of vaccinating the world, saving lives, and building back better.