United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that a safe and effective vaccine may be the only tool that can return the world to a sense of normalcy.
"A safe and effective vaccine may be the only tool that can return the world to a sense of 'normalcy,' saving millions of lives and countless trillions of dollars," the UN chief said in a virtual meeting with the African Group, which is one of the five UN regional groups and composed of 54 member states from the African continent.
"This requires the accelerated development, production and equitable access to, a COVID-19 vaccine - at a speed, scale, and coverage never seen before in human history," he said.
The secretary-general added that such a vaccine must have "a universal global benefit and allow us to control the pandemic - a clear global public good."
"We need an ambitious effort to ensure that international stakeholders operate through a harmonized, integrated and leveraged approach to maximize the speed and scale needed to the universal deployment such a vaccine by the end of 2020," he said.
