Jeffrey Sachs, Presindent of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Professor of Columbia University, spoke at the launching ceremony of Institute for Global Health and Development, Peking University (PKU-iGHD) and the Beijing Forum 2020: COVID-19 Shocks to Global Health and Development:
Thank you very, very much what a great privilege it is for me to be part of this important symposium in the launch of the new institute for global health and development. And I know I joined with Larry Summers, Victor Dzau, Dean Jameson and others, other Americans, how privileged we are to partner with you and to be joining you with this celebration and this important workshop. I too, would like to speak about the current crisis, the Covid crisis, and I'll try to share my screen to do so and I hope we can get that to work.
First, let me begin with a special gratitude and thanks to president Hao Ping of Peking University and congratulations for dear friend and colleague Gordon Liu the dean of the new PKU Institute for global health and development, very good news for the world.
This is the most recent map of the state of the Covid pandemic. It shows the cases per million populations for each country of the world. And I want to emphasize the vast difference of performance of different countries around the world. In recent days, China has had about ten cases, nationally per day. That is for a population of 1.4 billion people. So fewer than one case per hundred million populations. The United States, by contrast, has had, on average, 215,000 new cases a day for a population of 320 million or 651 cases per million per day. You can see that the united states, almost all of the Americas, almost all of Europe and Russia have had essentially an uncontrolled pandemic, whereas China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Australia, New Zealand, have had essentially a suppressed pandemic with a few cases per million per day. Or in the case of China, much fewer than 0.1 per million per day.
In other words, we're living very different experiences on the planet, where the Asia pacific region got the virus under control. The united states and Europe failed to get the virus under control. This is the most notable fact of 2020. In the united states, we never got the virus under control. This is the timeline of cases per day. You can see that we have now exceeded 200,000 cases, we've gone in waves, but never suppressed the virus. Whereas in China, after the initial Wuhan outbreak, China took decisive actions and really by March, certainly by April, the epidemic was suppressed. And then when there were periodic outbreaks often by introduction from abroad, China would mobilize to test 10 million people in Wuhan or in Beijing within days, in order to stop the transmission.
And indeed, to pick up the asymptomatic cases as well, in order to drive the epidemic back down to near zero, where it has stayed. This is astoundingly good news if it had been heeded in my country and other countries, because what the Asian Pacific countries proved is that even without a vaccine or better said before a vaccine, the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions or so called NPIs can suppress the pandemic. Technically, these NPIs are sufficient to reduce transmission, such that the effective reproduction rate is kept below one so that each infected person ends up infecting fewer than one other person. And by doing so, the epidemic is essentially stopped other than for occasional reintroductions. But when those occur, the use of these NPIs suppresses the new outbreak.
What are these NPIs? Most importantly: comprehensive testing, tracing, and quarantine. So that whenever there are suspicious cases or infectious people or people suspected of being infectious, they are isolated temporarily so that they cannot pass the virus to others. Of course, it also includes public hygiene and physical social distancing. It includes wearing face masks. It includes successively deploying digital applications to assist in all of these measures and to help provide information to the public. It includes being ready for pandemics, Doctor Dzau talked about it.
But the United States was completely unprepared for actually fighting this pandemic. Of course, we had the difficulty of the president who was stunningly uninterested and incompetent in doing so. The Asia pacific experience demonstrates the importance of trust between the government and the population, something that was sorely lacking in the united states and much of Europe as well.
And the Asia pacific experience demonstrates the importance of regional cooperation, the world health organization's western pacific region had its preparedness plans, and when this new zoonotic event occurred, there was cooperation within the region. And there was lots of discussion within the region of the health secretaries and the ministers and the technical officials on taking the emergency responses to stop the pandemic. What strikes me, as most important for this year, is that this virus could have been stopped as it was in the Asia pacific. It could have been stopped in Europe and the united states, but it was not. We ended up to this date with about 320,000 deaths in the united states alone. Compared with about 4,000 in China, it has been an utter tragedy. But most importantly, a shocking failure of public policy in the united states, a complete failure of any semblance of rational leadership in the united states during this period.
Now, what does this mean for global priorities and challenges for 2021. First, since it will take time to have the vaccines available and deployed globally and sufficiently to suppress the pandemic globally, and we have many uncertainties remaining about the efficacy of these vaccines, the ability of the virus to mutate around them, the duration of acquired immunity and so on. We don't know. What we can say certainly, is that we need comprehensive coverage by the non-pharmaceutical interventions that have proven their efficacy throughout the Asia Pacific, dramatically in China, but not only in China, as I've emphasized, in Korea, in Japan, in New Zealand, in Australia, even in the low-income countries of southeast Asia, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Lao PDR (Laos), tremendous accomplishments. And this should be the agenda for the entire world.
Yes, the vaccines are crucial and wonderful and a triumph of science, we hope, and we expect so. But until they are sufficiently applied, the comprehensive application of the non-pharmaceutical interventions is available and is absolutely crucial.
Second is, both Larry Summers and Victor Dzau have emphasized, rightly and wisely: we need a scaling up and equitable distribution of vaccines. COVAX is a wonderful initiative. We in the united states have to urge decisively. I expect it to happen, and I hope it happens on the first day of the new government, that the Biden administration will join COVAX and abide by these structures of COVAX. We must move beyond the utter immorality of the America first idea, which has been driving our government for years and it ends up doing nothing for America and obviously doing nothing for the world's benefit either.
So the United States must join COVAX as China has. And then together with Europe and with other countries of the world, we can have an equitable distribution of vaccines. As both the previous speakers have emphasized, we need support for low- and-middle-income countries. We need a new special drawing rights allocation of the international monetary fund. And we need another emergency financing.
The united states just voted emergency legislation today of 900 billion dollars and that follows a match package of emergency support for the united states of $1.7 trillion, roughly speaking. But when you look at the total IMF lending to more than 80 low-and-middle-income countries, wonderful emergency funding, it totals a sum of $100 billion dollars. So, clearly, the amount of financing is not sufficient by any means, perhaps by an order of magnitude to address the scale of the humanitarian crises that are building because of Covid-19.
We need as a global priority to set the foundations for a green and digital recovery, that is, to build back in a way that is itself sustainable. That actually provides for preparations as both the previous speakers emphasize, against the next zoonotic event. And they are indeed coming with increasing frequency because of disruptions to animal habitats, with increasing frequency. We need of course to address the other pressing challenges, especially human induced climate change, which is also a massive global disruptor.
And for all of this, we need successful global diplomacy. We need, most importantly, for the united states, for president Biden, and I fully expect him to reverse the nationalistic policies of Trump, who pulled out of the world health organization in the midst of the worst global pandemic in modern history, who pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the only country out of the hundred ninety-three signatories to do so, who has not joined COVAX, and whose idea of nationalism is destructive of the global order. I fully expect our new president will be a cooperator and a rational leader. And I hope and pray to get my country back on track where it needs to be, even to the point where we wear face masks without public disruptions of people shooting each other.
I think that there are important special opportunities for China's leadership in 2021. The first that Victor Dzau has so ably discussed and has helped to lead globally is vaccine cooperation under COVAX. And China's vaccines that are now being deployed, will provide, as Victor said, hundreds of millions of doses already started to be applied in other countries. This is wonderful and I count on and call on the United States to join China in this global role for all of the wise reasons that we've already heard. I think China can provide tremendously valuable technical logistical and, financial support for the scaling up of non-pharmaceutical interventions in developing countries as well. Because China has proved that it is possible to stop the pandemic, even before there is a vaccine, and that is a lesson that is potentially available to all countries. I believe that China's expertise, including the new institute for global health and development at Peking University can help to share the know-how and the experience that has enabled China to suppress the pandemic.
Third, I would like to see China and its neighbors in the new regional, comprehensive economic partnership. That is the 15 countries that include China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the ten ASEAN countries, almost all of which have relatively low levels of transmission of Covid-19 now; to bear down, stop the pandemic, and then safely reopen trade and travel within this economic partnership. Because these 15 countries constitute around 1/4 of the world's population, 1/4 of the world's GDP, 1/4, roughly of the world's trade. Yet, it's very close to having stopped the pandemic.
But now is the opportunity with the signing of the new trade agreement, also to use RCEP as a framework of regional cooperation to reestablish with the careful protocols, safe travel, tourism, and trade in 2021 by the region that has already come closest to ending the pandemic.
I would like to see China use 2021 also to promote the green and digital recovery. In my view, this could start with greening and digitalizing the Belt and Road Initiative. This is a very important infrastructure program led by China that will serve a tremendous role for the world if it promotes renewable energy rather than fossil fuels, and if it promotes the universal access, by the 5G digital services, throughout the belt and road initiative regions.
I believe that in the same vein, China can show tremendous global leadership in the coming here with the start of the 14th plan by building in a very strong ambition and trajectory of decarbonizing the energy system. So that China's leadership in stopping the pandemic can also be matched by China's leadership in stopping the global threat of human induced climate change. China of course will also launch and host the COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Which will take place in May, in Kunming. This is an extremely important gathering, because just as we have the crisis of the pandemic, and just as we have the crisis, globally of human induced climate change, we have also a catastrophic loss of biodiversity occurring in biomes all over the world.
This is the responsibility of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Alas, the United States never ratified that treaty, one of the only countries in the world not to join yet. I'm hoping that now finally we will accept that responsibility finally. But China will be hosting this crucial gathering in May, to get, much stronger policies by the world to protect the rapidly depleting biodiversity. This is an opportunity for tremendous leadership by China.
And then finally, I want to note that and emphasize that President Xi at the UN General Assembly in September pledged China to decarbonize the China's energy system before 2060. And I'm quite certain that on the first day of office, President Biden will make the pledge to decarbonize the us energy system by 2050. I'm hoping that when China, the United States, the European Union, the African Union, ASEAN, and other regional groupings and nations come to Top26 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland in November, all countries will come prepared with plans to decarbonize by midcentury, because the science tells us that is the last day that we have a chance to keep below 1.5°warming a dangerous guardrail for our global safety. We are not on a trajectory of safety, and we will not be unless all countries come prepared with plans to decarbonize by midcentury.
Finally, let me close by, again, giving a very warm welcome and expression of gratitude, I know on behalf of all of us to the new PKU Institute for Global Health and Development. Since Gordon Liu is a world leader and an esteemed member of the leadership council of the UN sustainable development solutions network, I want to make sure that PKU Institute for Global Health and Development plays a very active role in the global network of universities, working to promote the sustainable development goals and also plays a leadership role in the work of the Lancet’s Covid-19 commission, which aims to contribute to the early end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Once again, thank you very, very much for the great honor of being with you today on this launch. Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.
