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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday appealed for solidarity with developing countries in stemming the COVID-19 pandemic.
He argued that the international community will be helping itself by helping developing countries deal with the crisis.
If one looks at what has happened until now with COVID-19, the main crisis, with one or two exceptions, has occurred in countries that have huge capacity and huge resources, Guterres told a joint virtual briefing for UN member states on COVID-19.
COVID-19 is moving fast to the developing world in general, he warned. "It will move fast into Africa, to move fast into Latin America, into areas of South and Southeast Asia. And in some of those areas, we have dramatic gaps in the resources that are needed to respond to COVID-19."
Therefore, he said, massive international solidarity will be necessary -- massive solidarity to equip those countries to respond from the pandemic point of view and massive solidarity for them to be able to do what developed countries are now recognizing they need to do in relation to their people, their businesses, their economies.
There is a very difficult liquidity situation in many of these countries, said Guterres.
It is absolutely essential to mobilize the international community to help the developing world. Otherwise, it will not be possible to eradicate the pandemic, he said.
"And if the pandemic will develop, and will progress like wildfire in parts of the world, it is not only those parts of the world that will be impacted, because the more transmissions occur, the bigger the risk of mutations."
When viruses like this one mutate, even though a vaccine will eventually and hopefully become available soon, it will then become invalid for the new forms that the virus might present, warned Guterres.
It is in the interests of everybody to provide massive support to the developing world as COVID-19 is moving south and moving south in a very dangerous way, he said.
(CGTN)
