A pledging summit organised by the European Commission on Saturday raised 6.15 billion euros (6.9 billion dollars) to tackle COVID-19.
The event was part of a joint initiative by the European Commission and the advocacy group Global Citizen and included a star-studded globally televised and streamed concert.
The amount, which will go towards developing treatments and vaccines for the COVID-19 lung disease, was announced by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the end of an online conference.
United States pledged 545 million dollars for COVID-19 relief while Belgium pledged 11.5 million euros to the World Food Programme and four million euros to the WHO’s COVID-19 solidarity response fund.
Canada pledged 120 million Canadian dollars for the ACT Accelerator and 180 million Canadian dollars for COVID-19 humanitarian and development aid.
Denmark pledged DKK16 million to the UN Population Fund while Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) pledged 25 million dollars towards West Africa’s COVID-19 relief and development.
European Commission jointly with European Investment Bank pledged 4.9 billion euros to help countries recover from the pandemic while Luxembourg pledged 800,000 euros to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.
Germany pledged 383 million euros to support the Global Fund’s response mechanism and Global Citizen’s crisis network as Norway pledged 10 million dollars to vaccine alliance GAVI.
Netherlands pledged 25 million euros for procurement of a vaccine for countries needing it the most while Qatar pledged 10 million dollars to the WHO.
Serbia pledged 100,000 euros to vaccine alliance CEPI for vaccine research while Spain pledged 10 million euros to the Coronavirus Global Response initiative.
Sweden pledged 46 million euros to the WHO Solidarity Response Fund while Switzerland pledged 20 million euros to ensure equal access to a vaccine and testing.(Reuters/NAN)
