World leaders must gather for a major UN summit to resolve the Covid-19 pandemic otherwise the disease could prove “devastating” for the planet, former government leaders have said.
Vital time is being lost in tackling the disease as organisations worry about “commas in committee”, said Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand.
David Miliband, former British foreign secretary, lamented that while Europe was reintroducing lockdowns after “absurd” anti-vaccine propaganda, only 5 per cent of people in the world’s poorest countries have been vaccinated. This was a “comprehensive global failure” and poor world leadership, he said.
There was also “a grotesque failure of the G20 countries to come up with significant reforms” to ensure the pandemic was defeated with vaccines, the International Rescue Committee president said.
Mr Miliband was speaking at the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response online seminar publishing an update on its initial report six months ago.
Despite some progress being made since May, there were still 90 million Covid-19 infections and 1.65 million deaths, the Chatham House event heard.
“We recommended a comprehensive package of reforms … action is vital to stop the current pandemic and to stop a future health threat from devastating the world,” former Liberia president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.
That package recommended $100 billion for developing countries to tackle pandemics and receive enough vaccines, ventilators and personal protection equipment.
But instead, “waves of disease and deaths continue” with uneven vaccine coverage and very little inoculation in the poorest countries. “The world is losing vital time against a virus that continues to thrive, while we don't work urgently together,” Ms Sirleaf said.
The report, Losing Time: End this pandemic and secure the future, calculated that one billion spare vaccine doses are available but “despite impressive public pledges” by wealthy nations, only 256 million had been redistributed through Covax, the vaccine sharing initiative co-led by Gavi, the WHO and CEPI.
Vaccine doses nearing their expiry date were being dumped, the report said.
This should prove a “deep moral quandary” that while “healthy and wealthy” people were receiving third booster shots, 180,000 largely unvaccinated health workers had died from Covid-19.
Ms Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Laureate, called for a special session of the UN General Assembly to agree on “a political declaration that will provide a road map to end the pandemic and avert another”.
The huge profits made by pharmaceutical companies, which had refused to give up their intellectual property rights was heavily criticised by Ms Clark, who governed New Zealand from 1999 to 2008.
“Put bluntly, global public health shouldn't be held hostage to manufacturers who purchase patents, mainly with public money to spin them to profit,” she said.
The UN should introduce a standing provision for companies to give up their intellectual property to achieve global vaccination to fight the current and any future pandemics, she said.
Ms Clark condemned the lack of political will among G20 countries, which have failed to provide similar levels of leadership that resolved the 2008 financial crisis.
“We can't get out of this pandemic when we leave so many countries behind with such a terribly low rate of vaccine,” she said.
She called for a vaccine-plus strategy that included other anti-virus measures.
Ms Clark criticised unnecessary committee meetings while people were dying. “We urge member states to spend less time debating commas in committees while a pandemic still rages, people are dying and a new pandemic threat could arise any time and anywhere,” she said.
Despite five million dead and a global, multi-trillion economic shock, there was still inadequate global leadership, Mr Miliband said.
“We're now in the absurd situation of countries in Europe returning to lockdown because of an anti-vaccination movement at a time when the vaccination rates of the countries where the International Rescue Committee works are less than five per cent,” he said.
“This is a comprehensive global failure and there has been an inadequate collective global leadership response.”
He said the pandemic was proving “very, very costly” for the world's most vulnerable.
The report said world leaders needed to introduce reforms now so the chance to create a safer world “does not slip through our fingers”.
“We ask: if this pandemic representing a threat to the health and wellbeing of humanity worldwide cannot catalyse real change, what will?” the authors said.
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The biog
Favourite book: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Favourite holiday destination: Spain
Favourite film: Bohemian Rhapsody
Favourite place to visit in the UAE: The beach or Satwa
Children: Stepdaughter Tyler 27, daughter Quito 22 and son Dali 19
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Developer: EA Vancouver, EA Romania
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S
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RACE SCHEDULE
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Friday, September 29
First practice: 7am - 8.30am
Second practice: 11am - 12.30pm
Saturday, September 30
Qualifying: 1pm - 2pm
Sunday, October 1
Race: 11am - 1pm
How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
Fatherland
Kele Okereke
(BMG)
The biog
Birthday: February 22, 1956
Born: Madahha near Chittagong, Bangladesh
Arrived in UAE: 1978
Exercise: At least one hour a day on the Corniche, from 5.30-6am and 7pm to 8pm.
Favourite place in Abu Dhabi? “Everywhere. Wherever you go, you can relax.”
Profile
Company: Libra Project
Based: Masdar City, ADGM, London and Delaware
Launch year: 2017
Size: A team of 12 with six employed full-time
Sector: Renewable energy
Funding: $500,000 in Series A funding from family and friends in 2018. A Series B round looking to raise $1.5m is now live.
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Remaining Fixtures
Wednesday: West Indies v Scotland
Thursday: UAE v Zimbabwe
Friday: Afghanistan v Ireland
Sunday: Final
Essentials
The flights
Whether you trek after mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda or the Congo, the most convenient international airport is in Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali. There are direct flights from Dubai a couple of days a week with RwandAir. Otherwise, an indirect route is available via Nairobi with Kenya Airways. Flydubai flies to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, via Entebbe in Uganda. Expect to pay from US$350 (Dh1,286) return, including taxes.
The tours
Superb ape-watching tours that take in all three gorilla countries mentioned above are run by Natural World Safaris. In September, the company will be operating a unique Ugandan ape safari guided by well-known primatologist Ben Garrod.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, local operator Kivu Travel can organise pretty much any kind of safari throughout the Virunga National Park and elsewhere in eastern Congo.
CHINESE GRAND PRIX STARTING GRID
1st row
Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari)
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)
2nd row
Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes-GP)
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
3rd row
Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing)
Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull Racing)
4th row
Nico Hulkenberg (Renault)
Sergio Perez (Force India)
5th row
Carlos Sainz Jr (Renault)
Romain Grosjean (Haas)
6th row
Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
Esteban Ocon (Force India)
7th row
Fernando Alonso (McLaren)
Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren)
8th row
Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso)
Sergey Sirotkin (Williams)
9th row
Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso)
Lance Stroll (Williams)
10th row
Charles Leclerc (Sauber)
arcus Ericsson (Sauber)
The Greatest Royal Rumble card
50-man Royal Rumble - names entered so far include Braun Strowman, Daniel Bryan, Kurt Angle, Big Show, Kane, Chris Jericho, The New Day and Elias
Universal Championship Brock Lesnar (champion) v Roman Reigns in a steel cage match
WWE World Heavyweight ChampionshipAJ Styles (champion) v Shinsuke Nakamura
Intercontinental Championship Seth Rollins (champion) v The Miz v Finn Balor v Samoa Joe
United States Championship Jeff Hardy (champion) v Jinder Mahal
SmackDown Tag Team Championship The Bludgeon Brothers (champions) v The Usos
Raw Tag Team Championship (currently vacant) Cesaro and Sheamus v Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt
Casket match The Undertaker v Rusev
Singles match John Cena v Triple H
Cruiserweight Championship Cedric Alexander v Kalisto
MATCH INFO
Barcelona 2
Suarez (10'), Messi (52')
Real Madrid 2
Ronaldo (14'), Bale (72')
MATCH INFO
FA Cup final
Chelsea 1
Hazard (22' pen)
Manchester United 0
Man of the match: Eden Hazard (Chelsea)
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
When is VAR used?
• Goals
• Penalty decisions
• Direct red-card incidents
• Mistaken identity
'How To Build A Boat'
Jonathan Gornall, Simon & Schuster
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Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers