“United States is very concerned about the risk that new variants of coronavirus and the threat it could pose to the global economic recovery from the pandemic,” said US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday. 

Talking to reporters in Italy after a G20 meeting, she said, “We are very concerned about the Delta variant and other variants that could emerge and threaten recovery.” 

“We are a connected global economy, what happens in any part of the world affects all other countries.”

Also read: World must invest more to avoid COVID repeat: G20 panel

Releasing a final statement, G20 finance ministers warned that the spread of new variants was a “downside risk” to the economic recovery.

The US Treasury Secretary said the US recognises that it was important to work together to vaccinate the world population and they have the goal of wanting to vaccinate 70% percent of the world’s population by 2022.

Yellen said “a lot has been done” to help developing countries purchase vaccines, adding the world needed to “do something more and to be more effective” with respect to responding to outbreaks around the world, such as sending therapeutics and protective equipment.

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The G20 on Friday heard from a specially commissioned panel of experts who warned the world must invest much more — at least $75 billion over the next five years — to prepare for and try to avert the next pandemic.

“While we’re focused on the medium- and long-term… we certainly realise we also need to do more in the near term,” Yellen said.

The World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation “have formed a taskforce to work on this and we’ve asked that we have regular monthly reports on how that work is going and that we address this issue more fully in October” at the G20 ministers’ next meeting.” But certainly variants represent a threat to the entire globe,” Yellen said.