How to Accelerate the ACT Accelerator

The International Chamber of Commerce commends all the ACT Accelerator partners on having achieved so much already. Tests now provide results in less than 30 minutes. Dexamethasone saves lives among people with severe symptoms. Many vaccines are on the cusp of regulatory approvals and starting to get rolled out. Clinical practice has advanced significantly. And we have a global Equitable Access Framework for COVID-19.

But we still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, the pandemic is far from over. That only makes fully funding the ACT Accelerator all the more urgent and important.

Governments must view fully funding the ACT Accelerator not as a cost but for what it actually is – an investment. An investment to bring a quick end to the pandemic and get the world back to business.

In an interconnected world of global supply chains where domestic economic fortunes depend on global growth, every government should understand that funding the ACT Accelerator is effectively a domestic economic stimulus measure – but cheaper than many economic recovery measures and with a much better return on investment.

Now, as vaccines start to become available in wealthy countries, we must work doubly hard to ensure that developing and lower-income countries get equitable access to vaccines and treatments and have the capacity to distribute them at scale. ICC will bring our regional action networks to bear to help make this happen.

ICC, WHO and Global Citizen will host the first major corporate pledging session in early February in support of the ACT Accelerator. While most of the funding will inevitably have to come from governments, the private sector also has a key role to play and ICC is proud to help marshal the private sector’s resources to this most important cause. We look forward to working with all the ACT Accelerator partners to make this and subsequent event a success.

But that doesn’t obviate the need for governments to place a sharper focus on making vaccines available to everyone, everywhere. That’s why we have been consistently calling for an extraordinary G20 leaders’ summit to be held in early 2021 to forge a comprehensive global action plan to finally bring the pandemic to an end. This will remain an elusive goal without concerted international cooperation – and especially coordinated investing in the ACT Accelerator to save lives and protect livelihoods.