Virtual global Covid-19 summit yields US$3 billion in new funding
- US President Joe Biden warns other nations there’s ‘still so much left to do’, as US marks 1 million coronavirus deaths
- Over US$2 billion of the money will go towards ‘immediate’ Covid-19 response, while US$962 million has been committed to a World Bank fund
US President Joe Biden warned nations attending Thursday’s virtual global summit on Covid-19 that there was “still so much left to do” to quell the pandemic, as more than US$3 billion in new funding was pledged.
The veteran Democrat, however, may be at pains to spearhead ambitious plans to vaccinate the world and stop the spread of the coronavirus, as Congress has so far refused to authorise billions of dollars in funding.
The United States crossed a grim milestone as the summit began, with the White House announcing that more than 1 million Americans have now died due to Covid-19, the pandemic’s highest recorded death toll in the world.
In his remarks to the summit, Biden said that while progress had been made on global vaccinations and delivering medical equipment to countries in need, “there’s still so much left to do. This pandemic isn’t over”.
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A million Americans have died from Covid-19 with more than half cremated
“We all must do more. We must honour those we have lost by doing everything we can to prevent as many deaths as possible,” the US leader said.
