Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of China's National Health Commission (NHC), speaks at the sixth meeting of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator Facilitation Council on May 12. [Photo/nhc.gov.cn]

The sixth meeting of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator Facilitation Council was jointly held by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commission on May 12. Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of China's National Health Commission (NHC), participated in the meeting online.

Zeng said that China was the first country to pledge to make COVID-19 vaccine a global public good and has been honoring this commitment by providing much-needed vaccines to more than 100 countries and international organizations in various ways.

China is willing to continue to take actions to help improve the vaccine production capacity of relevant countries, and calls on all countries with the capacity to support the expansion of vaccine supply in developing countries, and to appropriately and flexibly simplify the approval process for the vaccines whose safety and effectiveness have been proven in practice, he added.

The meeting called on all the countries involved to continue to scale up investment to strengthen their health systems, increase the supply of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries and take concrete steps to expand vaccine production so as to ensure that all countries have equal access to the vaccines and the other tools necessary to combat the pandemic.

Around 140 representatives from members of the ACT Accelerator Facilitation Council, the WHO and international and non-governmental organizations took part in the meeting.