World leaders call for global treaty to tackle future pandemic

World leaders call for global treaty to tackle future pandemic

More than 20 world leaders have called for a new global treaty to help the world better prepare for future pandemics.

In an article published in newspapers around the world, leaders including Britain's Boris Johnson, Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Emmanuel Macron, South Korea's Moon Jae-in and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa called for universal access to vaccines.

They said the Covid-19 crisis had exposed the world's “weaknesses and divisions”, while another pandemic was a matter of “not if, but when”.

More than 2.8 million have died from Covid-19 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University figures. Some 27 million people have been infected by the virus