G7 leaders were yesterday set to agree on a joint declaration aimed at preventing another pandemic, as they resume wide-ranging talks at their first in-person summit in almost two years.
The group of leading economies -— Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US — would also try to showcase Western democratic cohesion against a resurgent China and recalcitrant Russia.
They were to be joined by the leaders of Australia, South Africa and South Korea, along with India taking part remotely, as the agenda broadens to foreign policy issues and climate change.
Photo: AFP
The G7 is meeting face to face for the first time since 2019, at a beachside venue in southwest England, after the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of last year’s summit.
The leaders on Friday opened the three-day summit with expectations of a pledge to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to poor countries this year and next year — much too slow to end the COVID-19 crisis in the short term, campaigners said.
On yesterday’s foreign policy agenda was a coup in Myanmar and a crackdown on democracy supporters in Belarus, alongside tensions with Russia and China.
Most of the leaders are to reconvene tomorrow in Brussels for a NATO meeting, before US President Joe Biden heads to his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, vowing to deliver a blunt message about Moscow’s behavior.
“I’ll tell you [about it] after I’ve delivered it,” Biden told reporters on Friday.
The G7 is expected to finalize the “Carbis Bay Declaration,” comprising a series of commitments to prevent a repeat of the devastation wreaked by COVID-19.
“For the first time today, the world’s leading democracies have come together to make sure that never again will we be caught unawares,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in remarks released ahead of the summit’s second day.
“That means learning lessons from the last 18 months and doing it differently next time around.”
The declaration would be published today alongside the G7’s final communique, following a beachside barbecue yesterday night.
The collective steps include slashing the time taken to develop and license vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for any future disease to under 100 days, while reinforcing global surveillance networks.
The leaders are expected to vow to boost genomic sequencing capacity, and support reforms to strengthen the WHO, said the British government, which like the US wants China to allow new access to WHO experts to determine how COVID-19 first emerged.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the UN agency would examine a British proposal to create a “Global Pandemic Radar” to send early warnings of future outbreaks.
“The world needs a stronger global surveillance system to detect new epidemic and pandemic risks,” he said.
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