UK to work with G7 to promote 5 point plan against another pandemic: Johnson
Sep 26, 2020
New York [US], Sept 26 : The United Kingdom will use its G7 presidency next year to create a new global approach to health security based on a five-point plan to protect humanity against another pandemic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday.
Addressing the United Nations' General Assembly, Prime Minister Johnson said that the very notion of the international community "looks, frankly, pretty tattered" after nine months of fighting COVID-19.
"So we in the UK we're going to work with our friends, we're going to use our G7 presidency next year to create a new global approach to health security based on a five-point plan to protect humanity against another pandemic," Johnson said.
"Our first aim should be to stop a new disease before it starts. About 60 percent of the pathogens circulating in the human population originated in animals and leapt from one species to the other in a 'zoonotic' transmission," he added.
The second objective will be to develop the manufacturing capacity for treatments and vaccines and the third one will be to design a global pandemic early warning system, according to Johnson.
Should these three steps fail in preventing a new pandemic, Johnson said the fourth step must be to have ready protocols for a genuinely global emergency response rather than "193 different campaigns against the same enemy," as it was the case with COVID-19.
Many countries imposed export controls at the outset of the pandemic, about two-thirds of which remain in force.
"So I would urge every country to take the fifth step and lift the export controls wherever possible - and agree not to revive them - and cancel any tariffs on the vital tools of our struggle: gloves, protective equipment, thermometers and other COVID-critical products," Johnson said.
