World leaders pledged on Friday to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the globe, but the U.S. did not take part in the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiative.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa were among those who joined a video conference to launch what the WHO had billed as a "landmark collaboration" to fight the pandemic.

The aim is to speed development of safe and effective drugs, tests and vaccines to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19 – and ensure equal access to treatments for rich and poor.

Read more: Trump to halt WHO funding over its 'mismanaging' of coronavirus

Global initiative 

"We are facing a common threat, which we can only defeat with a common approach," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as the virtual meeting got under way.

"Experience has told us that even when tools are available, they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the objective at a global pledging effort in early May would be to raise 7.5 billion euros ($8.10 billion) to ramp up work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment.

"This is a first step only, but more will be needed in the future," Von der Leyen told the conference.

Read more: WHO calls for international unity after Trump pulls funding

Ramaphosa, chairman of the African Union, warned that the continent – with its generally poor standards of healthcare – was "extremely vulnerable to the ravages of this virus and is in need of support."

Leaders from Asia, the Middle East and the Americas also joined the videoconference, but prior to the meeting a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva said the country would not be involved.

"There will be no U.S. official participation," he stated. "We look forward to learning more about this initiative in support of international cooperation to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 as soon as possible."

The decision follows U.S. President Donald Trump announcing a suspension of funding to the WHO after accusing the UN body of being "China-centric" and slow to react to the outbreak.

Adhanom Ghebreyesus has steadfastly defended the WHO's handling of the pandemic and repeatedly committed to conducting a post-pandemic evaluation, as the agency does with all crises.

Vaccine trials

More than 2.7 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and nearly 190,000 have died from it since the new coronavirus was first diagnosed in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

More than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed including six already in clinical trials, according to Seth Berkley, CEO of the Gavi vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership that leads immunization campaigns in poor countries.

"We need to ensure that there are enough vaccines for everyone, we are going to need global leadership to identify and prioritize vaccine candidates," he told a separate Geneva news briefing before taking part in the formal WHO announcement.

Global manufacturing capacity must be ramped up ahead of choosing "a winner" vaccine, Berkley said, noting that Gavi and the World Bank were looking at the issue.

"We can't have a repeat of what happened in 2009 – the H1N1 vaccine, when there was not enough supply for developing countries or when supply did come it came much later."

Another important question was how well a vaccine would work in people most at risk from COVID-19, Berkley said.

"How well do they work in the elderly, are they single or multiple dose etc?" he said, noting that older people had weaker immune systems. 

CGTN Europe has been providing in-depth coverage of the novel coronavirus story as it has unfolded. Here you can read the essential information about the crisis.

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