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STORY: WHO / FIFA #ACTOGETHER COVID-19
TRT: 6:09
SOURCE: WHO
RESRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 1 FEBRUARY 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, WHO:
"For the third week in a row, the number of new cases of COVID-19 reported globally fell last week. There are still many countries with increasing numbers of cases, but at the global level, this is encouraging news. It shows this virus can be controlled, even with the new variants in circulation. And it shows that if we keep going with the same proven public health measures, we can prevent infections and save lives."
3. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, WHO:
"However, we have been here before. Over the past year, there have been moments in almost all countries when cases declined, and governments opened up too quickly and individuals let down their guard, only for the virus to come roaring back. As vaccines are rolled out, it’s vital that all of us continue to take the precautions to keep ourselves and each other safe. Be a role model."
5. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, WHO:
"Last year, WHO entered a new partnership with FIFA, to leverage the enormous power of football to promote health. FIFA has been a strong supporter of global efforts to protect football fans from COVID-19. Last year, FIFA contributed 10 million U.S. dollars to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and conducted several campaigns to raise awareness of how to stay safe from the virus, be physically active and to stop violence against women."
7. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA:
"Fairness and a team spirit are key values of our sport. Football's beauty is, of course, that the sport is open to all people - girls and boys, women and men, all over the world. And these same key values, fairness and team spirit, are needed for today's great challenge: overcoming COVID 19. If we act together as a team, we can play our part in the fight against coronavirus. And in that way, football is also calling the international community to act together to ensure that the level playing field exists in relation to access to vaccines, to treatments, to diagnostic tests, and that this is the case all over the globe."
9. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael Owen, former football player:
"It is important that both of you, Dr. Tedros and Gianni, that you remind the powers that be that there needs to be equity and fairness in access to vaccines. This has been a global pandemic and globally, we need to give access to vaccination."
11. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA:
"When we play football, we want to protect the health of all those involved, the players, the coaches, the referees, the officials, the fans. And whatever we do and whatever we will do as well in the next qualifying games for the World Cup or some continental competitions, we will do it by adhering to a clear health protocol, which will not put at risk the health of anyone. It is always, of course, a balance that we have to take, but we need to respect the legislations, the decisions of the governments."
13. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA:
"In terms of priorities, the priority for the vaccines is, of course, for the people at risk and for the health workers. This is very clear in our mind. I don't consider, we don't consider football players as a priority group in this respect. Of course, for safety reasons in the months to come, in the context of international competitions, of travel and so on, vaccination might be recommended at some point. And the Olympic games that you mentioned are of course only in the summer, but all this will happen, of course, respecting the established order of distribution."
15. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, WHO:
"Manufacturing at this scale is a challenge where, you know, wanting billions of doses suddenly, and the world is not used to manufacturing these many vaccines. So, one thing we would like to encourage is for developers who now have vaccines that have passed the clinical efficacy trials to really explore how they can expand manufacturing capacity by partnering with other manufacturers that have spare capacity in different parts of the world."
17. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical lead, Health Emergencies Programme, WHO:
"They are having very productive discussions with Chinese counterparts, visiting different hospitals around Wuhan. They've had a very good visit to the market seeing firsthand the stalls and walking through, and we had some good feedback from them of the importance of being able to physically walk through. They've also met with counterparts at the Wuhan CDC and other different levels of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and they're having very good discussions. But as you know, the plans and the visits that they have provide detailed information. And all of this detailed information requires analysis, which is ongoing."
19. Wide shot, speakers at the podium in press room
FIFA is teaming up with the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote the need for fair access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostics, and to encourage people to keep practicing life-saving, everyday public health measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and to protect health.
In conjunction with the FIFA Club World Cup 2020, being held in Qatar from 4 to 11 February 2021, FIFA and WHO are launching a public awareness campaign involving star footballers, through TV and in-stadium messaging, to further promote the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator initiative launched in April 2020, and to urge people to practice mask wearing, physical distancing and hand hygiene.
“If we act together as a team, we can play our part in the fight against coronavirus. And in that way, football is also calling the international community to act together to ensure that the level playing field exists in relation to access to vaccines, to treatments, to diagnostic tests, and that this is the case all over the globe," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said during a joint press conference at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, thanked FIFA and the players for helping raise awareness on life saving interventions that all people can follow, and of the importance of intensified global support for the ACT Accelerator to ramp up development and equitable allocation of vaccines, treatments and tests to reduce severe disease and deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“FIFA has been a strong supporter of global efforts to protect football fans from COVID-19,” SAID Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s Director-General.
The new FIFA-WHO collaboration will amplify life-saving messages to a global audience with a series of promotional videos being broadcast during the FIFA Club World Cup. In the videos, competing club captains reiterate the key steps for everyone to follow in order to tackle and defeat the coronavirus by focusing on hands, elbow, face, distance, symptoms, masks and opening windows.
"When we play football, we want to protect the health of all those involved, the players, the coaches, the referees, the officials, the fans,” said the FIFA President. “And whatever we do and whatever we will do as well in the next qualifying games for the World Cup or some continental competitions, we will do it by adhering to a clear health protocol, which will not put at risk the health of anyone. It is always, of course, a balance that we have to take, but we need to respect the legislations, the decisions of the governments."
The video awareness campaign will feature players and head coaches from the competing teams at the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2020 together with FIFA Legends, and will be published on various FIFA, WHO and club digital channels, with the support of broadcasters worldwide.
WHO and FIFA signed a four-year collaboration in 2019 to promote healthy lifestyles through football globally.
