WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Group of 20, whose leaders are meeting in Rome at the weekend, had the political and financial power needed to end the pandemic by funding the plan, which he said could save five million lives.
The latest update of the so-called Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), until September 2022, is expected to include use of an experimental oral antiviral pill made by Merck & Co for treating mild and moderate cases.
If the pill is approved by regulatory authorities, the cost could be as little as $10 per course, the plan said, in line with a draft document seen by Reuters earlier this month.
Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, acknowledged that the ACT-A has struggled to secure previous financing.
"I hope and urge that the G20 will make a commitment to end the pandemic," Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, whose country co-chairs the fund-raising effort, told the media briefing.
Equal budgets of $7 billion are earmarked for both vaccines and diagnostic tests, with a further $5.9 billion for boosting health systems and $3.5 billion for treatments including antivirals, corticosteroids, and medical oxygen.
Booster vaccines
Covax, the vaccines arm of the ACT-A, has delivered some 400 million Covid-19 doses to more than 140 low- and middle-income countries, where vaccination rates remain low, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said.
About 82 countries are likely to miss a WHO global target of 40 percent vaccination coverage by year-end, but some of them could if supplies start flowing, she said.
"One of the things that is now interfering in a big way is the need for boosters, more and more high income countries are going in for the booster doses and this is now sucking up the vaccine doses as well," Swaminathan added.
Nearly a million booster jabs are being given each day, "three times the amount of vaccines being administered in low-income countries," she said.
Merck drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering emergency use authorization of molnupiravir, the antiviral pill Merck has developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. It was shown in a clinical trial to halve the risk of serious disease and death when given early for COVID-19.
"This is a drug that we are currently evaluating and we met with Merck on Friday to discuss data from their current clinical trials that are under way in other countries," said Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid, adding the agency hoped to issue guidance on its use in coming weeks.