In order to continue the momentum of the Global Epidemic Prevention Summit held by US President Biden in late September, Brinken will hold the COVID-19 Ministerial Summit at 8 am Eastern Time on the 10th (9 pm Beijing Time on the 10th). This time, it will focus on topics such as vaccine distribution, increasing global vaccine production, and strengthening the global health security architecture. Invites include foreign ministers of various countries, leaders of regional and international organizations.
The US Department of State’s Global Outbreak Response and Health Security Coordinator, Gayle Smith, held a pre-conference media briefing yesterday (November 9). Regarding the list of invitations that has not been announced so far, many media have asked Smith whether Taiwan, African countries, or China are invited, but they have not received a positive response. Smith only said that he would provide relevant information after the meeting.
The media also asked Smith yesterday whether the US views the COVID-19 Ministerial Summit as a new mechanism, hoping to work with allies to alleviate the problems caused by Taiwan’s exclusion by the World Health Organization (WHO)? Smith replied that in terms of the global health security architecture, the United States believes that the most important thing is to establish a platform for foreign ministers to focus on this topic. The United States hopes that the meeting can be used as the beginning of a longer-term, intensive and deliberate dialogue mechanism to ensure that the world will not repeat the same mistakes and prepare for the future, and it is best to prevent future health threats from evolving into a global pandemic.
According to Reuters, the United States will provide people with booster vaccination before winter, and it has been under pressure to share more vaccine supplies with the rest of the world.
When talking about this ministerial summit recently, Brinken said: “We will discuss accelerating efforts to achieve vaccine equity and impact.”
According to the latest data, the Covid-19 epidemic, which has spread worldwide for the past two years, has claimed more than 5 million lives. As of now, the epidemic does not seem to have an end in sight.
In order to end the epidemic and strengthen the global health security mechanism, US President Biden held a global epidemic prevention video summit at the White House on September 22. At that time, he promised to buy another 500 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to donate to other countries. This move also brings the total amount of vaccine pledged by the United States to 1.1 billion doses, surpassing the total pledged by other countries around the world.
According to reports, Biden’s September epidemic prevention video summit convened a total of 180 representatives of countries, international organizations and non-governmental organizations to participate. Former Vice President Chen Jianren of Taiwan with a public health background was also invited to attend.
An expert in the medical field who did not want to be named said that Brinken’s online ministerial summit was mainly to discuss the fair distribution of Chinese virus vaccines. Therefore, the participants are mainly producing countries, and Taiwan is the vaccine recipient. It’s not surprising if you are not invited.
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