US announces global Covid summit May 12

The virtual gathering will be co-chaired by the United States, along with current G7 president Germany, G20 president Indonesia, African Union chair Senegal, and Belize, the current chair of the CARICOM Caribbean grouping.

"The summit will redouble our collective efforts to end the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and prepare for future health threats," the countries said in a joint statement.

This will be the second global huddle on the pandemic, which has killed more than six million people and triggered profound disruption to leading economies and trading patterns in the two years since it began to spread.

Biden hosted a similar summit last September, at which he urged partners to surge vaccines and ensure that 70 percent of every country has been vaccinated by September this year.

Although death rates are plummeting world wide, the virus continues to spread, preventing many leading countries from fully lifting restrictions, while Shanghai in China is in the midst of a draconian lockdown.

Summit hosts appealed for maintaining the sense of urgency.

"In advance of the May 12 summit, we are calling on world leaders, members of civil society, non-governmental organisations, philanthropists, and the private sector to make new commitments and bring solutions to vaccinate the world, save lives now, and build better health security -- for everyone, everywhere," the joint statement said.

"The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed at controlling Covid-19 worldwide," it said.

And while the latest variants are less lethal, the summit statement stressed there must be a focus on stopping similar future catastrophes from taking the world by surprise.

"We know we must prepare now to build, sustain, and finance the global capacity we need, not only for emerging Covid-19 variants, but also future health crises," the statement said.