I’m delighted that the UK is co-hosting this Summit and joining
forces with all of you against our common enemy, the coronavirus.
In our own countries, we have taken extraordinary measures,
asking our people to accept sweeping restrictions on their way of
life, and by doing so, we have formed a human shield around our
health systems, enabling our heroic health workers to save many
lives - including my own.
But the truth is that none of us can succeed alone.
To win this battle, we must work together to build an impregnable
shield around all our people, and that can only be achieved by
developing and mass producing a vaccine.
The more we pull together and share our expertise, the faster our
scientists will succeed.
The UK is the biggest donor to the efforts of the Coalition for
Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to find a vaccine.
We have committed up to £744 million for the global response to
coronavirus, including our pledge of £388 million for the vital
research and development of vaccines, treatments and tests, and
that is the focus of today’s conference.
And through Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, we are also
helping the world’s poorest countries cope with the virus.
And I look forward to welcoming many of you to Gavi’s Global
Vaccine Summit which the UK is hosting on 4th June.
When we do find a vaccine, it’s vital that we are able to
distribute it to everyone who needs it.
Countries and pharmaceutical companies will need to work together
with an approach that defies the usual ways of operating.
We’ll need innovative partnerships like the one between
AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
And we’ll need a truly global effort – because no one country,
and no one pharmaceutical company, will be able to do this alone.
The race to discover the vaccine to defeat this virus is not a
competition between countries, but the most urgent shared
endeavour of our lifetimes.
It’s humanity against the virus.
We are in this together, and together we will prevail.
