Global investor statement in support of an effective, fair and equitable global response to COVID-19

Signatories to the statement:

a) Encourage world leaders in the G7, G20 and ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council to finance the ACT-Accelerator in full and deploy adequate funding to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 tools globally;

 b) Commit to work with the Access to Medicine Foundation on this issue and engage (bilaterally and/or via existing collaborative initiatives) with investee healthcare companies to promote industry actions supporting the mission and operations of the ACT-Accelerator (e.g., cross-industry partnerships to accelerate R&D and expand production, equitable pricing strategies, voluntary licensing agreements);

and c) Recommend that governments and international organisations explore the feasibility of innovative finance mechanisms for national and global COVID-19 responses, similar to vaccine bonds issued by the International Finance Facility for Immunisation or social bonds for COVID19 programmes issued by individual or multiple governments. These mechanisms could build on the strong response by capital markets to ESG-labelled debt issued in 2020.

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Over 100 investors with more than $12 trillion in assets under management have already signed the document, which will be published on Tuesday 23 February.

The deadline for sign-on is Monday 22 February 6pm PST.

Please contact Damiano de Felice (ddefelice@accesstomedicinefoundation.org) to add your name in support or for further information.

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A study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation has found that advanced economies that can vaccinate all of their citizens remain at risk of a sluggish recovery with a drag on GDP if infection continues to spread unabated in emerging markets. In fact, the global economy stands to lose as much as US$9.2 trillion if governments fail to ensure that developing economies gain access to COVID-19 vaccines. These losses dwarf the funding needed to enable vaccines to be procured for everyone, everywhere – making a clear “investment case” for full capitalization of the ACT-Accelerator and a coordinated global approach to distribution.

A different study commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has reached a similar conclusion: leaving lower-income countries without access to vaccines amid the COVID-19 pandemic will cause significant economic damage that puts decades of economic progress at risk – for both emerging markets and advanced economies alike. The report has estimated that the economic benefits of a global equitable vaccine solution alone for the 10 countries included in the analysis would be at least US$ 153 billion in 2020-21, rising to US$ 466 billion by 2025. This is more than 12 times the US$ 38 billion estimated total cost of the ACT-Accelerator.

Given the pervasive health and social costs of the pandemic, there is a strong moral argument to leave no one behind. The two reports above highlight that empowering an effective, fair and equitable global response to COVID-19 via the ACT-Accelerator in 2021 is not only the right thing to do – it also makes full economic sense.

The International Monetary Fund has urged the international community to act quickly to make sure that COVID-19 health technologies are available globally to mitigate the risks of virus mutations and address what is currently a deeply iniquitous distribution of COVID-19 tools across the world.