Addressing the WHO’s Executive Board Meeting, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Adviser to the new US President, said that Mr. Biden intended to issue a directive within hours so that the country can become part of the COVAX platform to advance multilateral efforts to distribute coronavirus vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
Speaking one year ago “to the day” since the United States confirmed its first case of COVID-19 infection, Dr. Fauci noted that global infections had now surpassed 90 million.
This was a “devastating number that continues to grow”, he said, while paying tribute to the scientists, public health officials and frontline healthcare workers, and community health workers who had worked “heroically” to fight the virus.
They had developed medical countermeasures “at truly phenomenal speed, adapting their responses as more is known about the virus, he said, “courageously treating the millions of people who have been stricken by this