DM Monitoring
BUENOS AIRES: Countries need to strengthen multilateralism and international cooperation, especially when faced with a challenge such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Sola said.
Addressing his counterparts from the Group of Twenty (G20) via videoconference, Sola said: “This crisis has reaffirmed our conviction that we must work to strengthen multilateralism and solidarity.”
According to a statement from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Sola cited cooperation between Argentina and Mexico to manufacture and distribute a British-made COVID-19 vaccine as an example of the kind of global collaboration the South American country seeks to promote.
“Argentina and Mexico will coproduce a vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
We will make it available throughout Latin America in the first quarter of next year at an affordable price, so as not to leave anyone behind,” Sola said.
In the G20, countries have a global mechanism to jointly tackle the current health and economic crises, and the underlying problems that helped cause them, including inequality and poverty, he noted.
“This crisis should serve as a wake-up call for us to mobilize against the disparities and gaps that have resulted in an increasingly fragile world.
We will continue working towards that goal,” Sola said.
Sola participated in the meeting at the invitation of Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Foreign Affairs Minister of Saudi Arabia, which is chairing the G20 this year.
Argentina will produce a vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
