 Good morning and welcome to this first of two sessions on health. The first session will be focusing on COVID-19 and the second session will be dealing with the issues of global governance and health. As you, I'm sure, realize COVID-19 is the worst combined health and socioeconomic crisis in living memory. In a little less than three years, COVID-19 has infected at least 250 million people across the world and generated a global death toll estimated to be 14 to 17 million people. At the highest point of the epidemic, 90 percent of children across the world were unable to attend school. And an output of $22 trillion is expected to be lost in the period 2020 to 2025, the deepest shock to the global economy since World War II. By November 2022, at least 125 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty because of the pandemic. And the pandemic is not over. As we speak, hospitalizations are increasing again, at least in Europe and in the US. And the pandemic continues to have a profound impact on lives and livelihoods as economy slowly begins to take place in terms of recovery in at least health, wealthiest countries, but still falters in low-income countries, as we have been discussing even in the previous session. This is the third time we address COVID-19 at the World Policy Conference. The first event was virtual in 2020. Some of you may have attended it. Then we had a session last year. And some of the speakers this year are speakers who were with us in 2021. And now we're meeting again almost three years after the first case of pneumonia due to an unknown new pathogen were identified in Wuhan, China. So there are three aims to our session today. The first is to discuss the current pandemic situation and whether epidemiological scenarios can be built for the short and mid-term. And we'll hear from Professor Antoine Flau, who is the Director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva. Then we will hear three regional perspectives and how lessons from the pandemic are being learned in different regions. In Africa, from Dr. Juliet Twackley, Chief Medical Officer at Family Child Associates in Accra, Ghana, in the United Emirates, from Dr. Mahaté Sir Barakat, Director-General of the Frontline Heroes Office in the United Emirates, and in China, from Ede Chow, Secretary-General of the Shanghai Development Research Foundation. And we will close considering how other pandemic threats can arise anytime, particularly from the increasing opportunities of animal-human contacts at global level. And we'll hear from Professor Christian Breschaud from the University of South Florida and President of the Global Virus Network.