The ACT Accelerator launched an emergency appeal on 16 August for US$ 7.7 billion to provide the many countries caught up in new waves of COVID-19 with more medicines, testing, oxygen and protective gear for frontline health workers.

"ACT-A's financing gap right now is $16.8 billion. Of that, we're urgently appealing for $7.7 billion to try to help those lowest-income countries survive Delta while we get vaccines to them," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, ACT Accelerator team lead.

By mid-August, Delta had appeared in 142 countries, overwhelming medical systems and causing shortages of medicines, oxygen, diagnostic tests, masks, gloves and gowns.

Wide swaths of the world still have no access to vaccines.

"As long as some country, somewhere, doesn't have enough vaccine coverage, the virus is breeding and mutating and can create a new variant," WHO Assistant Director-General Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão told a virtual town hall audience this month.

The funding appeal, called the Rapid ACT Accelerator Delta Response (RADAR), would finance a tenfold increase in testing, which is indispensable for identifying COVID-19 patients and for discovering and tracking new variants of the virus. The money would also be used for research and development to keep COVID-19 tools current and to make sure that delivery routes for them are clear and efficient.

In parallel to the RADAR appeal, ACT-A's COVAX facility is seeking US$ 3.8 billion to reserve 760 million doses of vaccine for delivery in 2022.

ACT-A's funding gap for this year--US$ 16.8 billion--represents less than half a percent of the amount that G20 countries have spent to deal with the domestic consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The scramble for pandemic resources is becoming increasingly desperate. At the Global Fund, for example, appeals from countries have far outstripped the organization's US$ 3.7 billion COVID-19 assistance fund. This month, the Global Fund registered $1.2 billion in unfunded applications from dozens of countries, and expects that shortfall to increase to several billion over the coming weeks.

See ACT-A's news release on the RADAR appeal.

ACT-A's latest update paints a picture of deep inequity

ACT-A's second-quarter update, published 4 August, shows the underfunded partnership working amid a pandemic that has split along two tracks: recovery in vaccinated, higher-income countries, and surging infections driven by highly contagious virus variants in under-vaccinated, lower-income countries.

"The international community is bracing for multiple imminent surges. Inequity in access to lifesaving COVID-19 tools has never been more apparent," the update reports. It outlines an urgent need in many countries for diagnostics, treatments, personal protective equipment, medical oxygen and other resources.

The 12-page, illustrated update reports that from the beginning of the pandemic through June, ACT-A delivered 92.9 million vaccine doses and procured 84 million tests, and provided US$ 316 million in oxygen supplies, US$ 554 million in personal protective equipment and US$ 37 million in treatments, including dexamethasone.

“WHO’s goal remains to support every country to vaccinate at least 10 percent of its population by the end of September, at least 40 percent by the end of this year, and 70 percent by the middle of next year,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a recent press briefing, adding that the target is still “a long way off.”

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See the new video on testing equity from FIND and the Global Fund:

Fifty-two countries unite to seek new COVID-19 treatments

On 11 August, WHO announced the start of a very large international drug trial to test three medicines for their COVID-fighting potential.

Thousands of researchers, 52 countries and more than 600 hospitals are participating in Solidarity Plus trial, which will determine if the three drugs, which are already in use--artesunate for malaria, imatinib for certain cancers, and infliximab for immune system diseases--can be repurposed to reduce deaths among hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

"Having so many sites in so many different countries and regions will help us get to these answers as fast as possible," Dr. Marie-Pierre Preziosi, co-lead of WHO's Research and Development Blueprint, told reporters at the announcement of the trial.

Solidarity Plus is a sequel to the Solidarity trial, which found that four drugs touted early in the pandemic as possible treatments-- hydroxychloroquine, interferon, remdesivir and lopinavir/ritonavir--in fact had little or no effect in helping COVID-19 patients.

Building a better face mask

ACT-A partners push for upgrading the quality and supply of protective gear for health workers