WASHINGTON D.C – As outlined in its recent Action Plan, the United States is bringing together the brightest minds in U.S. government agencies, the private sector, universities, and overseas partners to develop vaccines and therapeutic interventions to protect the world from COVID-19. The United States is using its G7 Presidency to catalyze the power and resilience of the world’s leading democracies and free economies in this effort. The United States welcomes efforts by other countries to mobilize resources to mitigate and ultimately end the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts like the pledging conference today in Europe which, among other things, will support investments in the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the United Kingdom’s June 4 pledging conference for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI).
Whole-of-America efforts include the following:
The Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) partnership is developing a collaborative framework to prioritize vaccine and drug candidates, streamline clinical trials, coordinate regulatory processes, and leverage assets among all partners to respond rapidly to the COVID-19 and future pandemics. Dedicated to a coordinated research response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this initiative brings together more than a dozen leading biopharmaceutical companies, the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the European Medicines Agency.
In addition to long-standing investments in research, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion developing COVID-19 vaccines in partnership with the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and international stakeholders. ?Two U.S. government-sponsored vaccine efforts are currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. One of these candidates?was developed in partnership with Norway-based CEPI.
Building on its investment of over $140 billion in life-saving efforts in global health over the past two decades, the United States is leveraging years of experience with the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), and investments to stop tuberculosis and polio. With more to come, the U.S. government has already committed more than $500 million in assistance to improve public health education, water, and sanitation in healthcare facilities and to increase laboratory, disease-surveillance, and rapid-response capacity in more than 100 of the most at-risk countries around the world.
