The devastating human and economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the need for a global response. A response based on solidarity, unity and collaboration; across sectors, across communities and across borders.

An International Pandemic Treaty has the potential to incentivise, foster and grow a research-ecosystem able to respond to global health threats. It can facilitate resilient global supply chains by ensuring the free-flow of goods, expertise and people in times of crisis.

Just a year on from the WHO declaring COVID-19 a pandemic, innovation has created hope. Hope that through the use of new diagnostics, treatments and vaccines, together we can beat this pandemic, save countless lives and re-energise the global economy. The innovative industry stands ready to engage across the research and health communities to see how an International Pandemic Treaty can further incentivise and harness medical innovation to ensure we are even better equipped to fight future pandemics.

While these discussions are on-going, our focus will be to continue to research, develop, manufacture and supply diagnostics, treatments and vaccines on an unprecedented scale. We are ramping up production, sharing capacity through voluntary licensing and tech-transfer agreements and new vaccines are coming on stream. To date over 552 million doses have been administered to citizens around the world and the total number of vaccines produced is likely to hit 1 billion doses during April. This is an incredible collaborative achievement by industry, regulators, governments and institutions around the world, collaboration that can be extended into discussions around an International Pandemic Treaty.