Merkel: COVID-19 vaccine must be available for all

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday pledged significant funding for research on the novel coronavirus, underlining that a possible vaccine against COVID-19 should be made available to all countries.

Addressing lawmakers at the German parliament ahead of a video conference among EU leaders, Merkel underlined that returning to normal life across the world would only be possible once a vaccine against coronavirus was developed.

"Science is never national, science serves humanity," Merkel stressed, calling for stronger international cooperation in efforts to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.

"If we find a medicine or vaccine, test and approve it, then this must be available and affordable to the entire world," she stressed.

Germany on Wednesday approved the first clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine on humans, jointly developed by Turkish professor Ugur Sahin’s BioNTech company and pharma giant Pfizer.

Scientists and researchers across the world are scrambling to find a vaccine for the virus which has infected over 2.6 million people worldwide and killed more than 183,000.

So far, nearly 715,000 coronavirus patients have recovered from the disease, according to data compiled by the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.