British Prime Minister Boris Johnson needs the upcoming Group of Seven summit to attain settlement on Covid-19 vaccine passports and to open talks on a “world treaty” to prepare for future pandemics.
“We need to have agreements on issues such as vaccine passports, Covid status certification and the rest,” Johnson mentioned in an interview broadcast Sunday by Canadian public channel CBC.
“There has to be some type of settlement then, on the G7 degree to begin, on how journey and passports are going to work.”
Johnson was speaking ahead of a June 11-13 summit of the G7 economic powers (US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) which he will host in Cornwall, at the southwestern tip of England.
“What we need, I think, is a global treaty on pandemic preparedness,” he mentioned, including that 2020 had been a “horrible 12 months for humanity.”
To date, the pandemic has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide. Britain was among the hardest-hit countries, though it has been recovering since beginning vaccinations.
Johnson said it was also a bad time “for believers in global cooperation, because the world simply became balkanized,” with many international locations sluggish to share shares of protecting tools, medicines and vaccines.
“We’ve obtained to do higher than this,” the prime minister added.
“Vaccination has got to be a global enterprise,” Johnson mentioned within the interview taped Friday.
He mentioned it was essential that creating international locations obtain vaccine provides as rapidly as doable.
Rather than the aim set by a few of vaccinating the world by 2024 or 2025, Johnson set a extra bold goal, saying, “We want to get this finished by the top of subsequent 12 months.”
As to the debate over the origins of the pandemic — which flared up recently when President Joe Biden ordered a new intelligence report on the problem — Johnson said he still leaned to the theory that it had spread from wild animals to humans, not leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
“But,” he added, “I’m not going to exclude any chance.”
Johnson, who himself was hospitalized last year with a serious case of Covid, has faced sharp criticism in Britain for his early handling of the pandemic there.
The G7 summit will be an in-person affair. The group was set to meet last summer in the US, but Covid concerns led to the meeting’s cancellation.
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