The head of the World Health Organisation on Monday urged countries to work together to bring the acute phase of the pandemic to an end, saying that they now have all the tools available to do so.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is now entering its third year and we are at a critical juncture," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference alongside Germany's development minister Svenja Schulze.
"We must work together to bring the acute phase of this pandemic to an end. We cannot let it continue to drag on, lurching between panic and neglect."
Tedros said on Monday that Germany had become the agency's largest donor, without giving details. Historically, the United States has made the biggest financial contribution among member states to the organisation.
Schulze said that the top priority of Germany, which took over the G7 Presidency, is to end the pandemic worldwide and called for a "massively accelerated, truly global vaccination campaign" in order to do so.
The event in Geneva kicks off a week of WHO Executive Board meetings where key aspects of the U.N. health agency's future are due to be discussed, including Tedros' bid for a second term and a proposal to make the agency more financially independent.
The United Nations General Assembly will vote on Thursday on a draft resolution that demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza after the US vetoed a similar effort in the Security Council last week.
Israel's parliament rejected early on Thursday a preliminary vote to dissolve itself, the Knesset said in a statement, after an agreement was reached regarding a dispute over conscription.
U.S. troops in Los Angeles are authorized to detain people until police can arrest them, their commanding officer said on Wednesday, as hundreds of Marines prepared to move into a city rocked by protests over President Donald Trump's immigration raids.
Several US cities braced for a new round of protests on Wednesday over President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration raids, as parts of Los Angeles spent the night under curfew in an effort to quell five days of unrest.
Austrian authorities were searching on Wednesday for answers to why a 21-year-old gunman shot 10 people in a rampage at his former high school before killing himself, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country's modern history.