Thank you, Liam, and thank you to the board of the Parliamentary Network and to all of you for the continued engagement, for the support and partnership with the bank’s group and IMF on this pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic as we have seen unfold, exacerbated iniquities all over the world, between countries and within countries, across income, gender, race and other socio-demographic characteristics of populations, it is threatening our goal to end extreme poverty. 150 million people are estimated to be pushed into extreme poverty by the end of 2021 and where we are today vaccines offer at least one tool, one critical tool to mitigate this unfolding disaster on our world.

The World Bank, as I think we’ve discussed in the past, started out with a very fast and broad response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since mid-March, the first track facility that was approved by the board made available initially 14 billion US dollars, 6 billion of which was to IDA and IBRD countries and 8 billion was through IFC to enable the emergency response. And in April, the first sets of countries had resources at hand to get the necessary equipment, PPE, strengthen their health system, engage their communities.

Now, by June, the much broader socio-economic package was announced within which this health response to countries, as well as through the IFC was located. We undertook all of these efforts in a globally coordinated manner with WHO, with UNICEF, with Gavi, with others in the landscape. By October, vaccine development had progressed and, in recognition of that, in fact, if we don’t intervene, it is likely that many countries will spend much longer periods before getting access to the vaccines.

I think we’re seeing some of this beginning to unfold, but world banks won’t approve in October an additional financing of 12 billion US dollars to help countries, both IDA and IBRD countries, within their existing envelopes. Access, vaccines would also be able to deploy the vaccines because purchasing the vaccines is only one part of the issue. The effective deployment of the vaccine is also an important element of it.

So, the 12 billion US dollars that the bank approved will enable countries to be able to do that and we’ve already begun to see countries benefiting from that. The first, Lebanon, for instance, had the board approved 34 million dollars and I think the vaccines have already arrived in Lebanon. Mongolia, Tajikistan and more than 30 countries are in the pipeline currently to use those resources when available by the bank to enable them acquire the vaccine, but also deploy the vaccines.

One thing that’s important is that we’re doing this in a complimentary manner with Covax because all of these countries that I’ve mentioned are also part of the Covax initiative. So, in a way, it’s globally coordinated with the multilateral mechanism that exists and that get towards helping countries access these vaccines as closely as we can with the sort of high-income countries which are much further advanced in terms of their deployment of vaccines to their citizens.

Now, I mentioned deployment as key. We undertook a country readiness assessment alongside WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, Global Fund and the bank in more than 140 countries have now sort of kicked off that process and more than 126 of them have completed one round of that assessment and are fitting the understanding of the gaps in their readiness into their plans to deploy the vaccines. The assessments looked at things like policies for allocation within countries, pharmacovigilance systems, information systems to track who is getting the vaccine and how it has been deployed,  the human resources at the front lines that are needed, the cool chain infrastructure and the logistical capacity, as well as the regulatory capacities and that they should have a comprehensive plan in the way that allows them to effectively deploy the vaccines that is critical to mitigate the impact of this.

In addition, the Global Financial Facility has been working alongside IDA to help protect the gains that we have had in terms of other secondary issues that the pandemic has unleashed. Reproductive health, maternal and child health, other diseases that are still unfolding because of the disruption caused by the pandemic. And, through the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Multi-Donor Trust Fund we’re also supporting countries who really continue to strengthen their core public health preparedness because this is a long game, this is not just a one-year, two-year issue and there would be several other infectious disease threats that would be ahead of us. And, so we’re bringing all of those instruments really to complement what the bank is doing through IDA and IBRD.  The private sector is here and I’m sure you’ll hear from my colleague Tomasz Telma who’s the Global Director at IFC in terms of what the IFC has been doing.

So, we look forward to continue to engage with you as we deepen this effort to not only support countries dealing with the basic emergency response to the pandemic, but also get access to vaccines as soon as possible for their citizens.