The global fight against the Corona pandemic
Since the start of the Corona pandemic, Germany has been committed to fair and global distribution of vaccines to fight Coronavirus. The topic will also be high on the agenda during the German presidency of the G7 in 2022. Germany will chair the group of the seven leading industrialized nations and democracies for one year, and in this context the Federal Government Federal Government The Federal Government and cabinet is made up of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Ministers. While the Chancellor holds the power to issue directives, the ministers have departmental powers, meaning that they independently run their respective ministries in the framework of those directives… Read more › is also aiming to work to fight the pandemic in a spirit of fellowship and solidarity.
In April 2020 Germany was among the founding members of the so-called ACT Accelerator (Access to Covid-19 Tools), which was launched as part of the global fight against the pandemic. The Federal Republic is the second-largest donor, having contributed 2.2 billion euros to the initiative by the start of 2022. Most of the financing was committed to the international vaccine platform Covax, which supplies vaccine doses to countries all over the world. By mid-January 2022, the number of doses supplied via this platform had surpassed the one-billion mark.
Germany is also donating vaccines from its own supply contracts when these are not needed domestically. In 2021 alone, Germany gave away more than 100 million doses this way, with most going to Covax but some also donated bilaterally to individual countries like Egypt, Ghana, Namibia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Ukraine. By the end of 2022, Germany plans to give a total of at least 175 million doses to emerging and developing countries, making it the second-biggest donor worldwide.
Beyond these donations and financial support, Germany and the European Union European Union In 1957, the Federal Republic was one of the six founder members of the current European Union (EU). Since 2013, the EU has consisted of 28 member states and the euro is the official tender in 19 of them. Germany contributes about 20% to the EU budget. Günther Oettinger (CDU), the former Prime… Read more › are also working to promote the production of vaccines, particularly in Africa. Together with South Africa, Germany chairs the Covax Manufacturing Taskforce that was created for this purpose in March 2021.
Germany is also supporting other countries with respirators, for example. Furthermore, by the start of 2022 the Federal Republic had made available around 450 million euros to support people in humanitarian emergencies in connection with the Corona pandemic. One key lesson from the pandemic for Germany is also to improve the global healthcare architecture in the medium and long term, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) at its centre.