 Welcome to this first session of the day that is dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the first lessons we can draw from the pandemic. With COVID-19, as has already been said by Thierry de Montbryal, the health and the well-being of millions of people were abruptly put in danger and half of the world's population forced into confinement. Our economies and the very structure of our societies have been shaken, as Dr Tedros just said, and put the multilateral system at a test. And the crisis has yet not finished unwinding its negative aspects. Here in Europe, where only 7% of the people have been infected with the coronavirus so far, a few days ago, the Institute of Health Metrics at the University of Washington predicted that daily deaths from COVID-19 will continue to rise in the coming weeks, reaching a peak, not reaching a peak before maybe mid-January, with hospitals continuing being stretched to breaking point until the end of February, maybe. Now, for today's discussion, to me, the key observation is that against a certain lack of interest in health issues that has been prevailing in recent years, the world is now realizing how much, among all global issues, it is health in the short term that has the greatest potential of disruption in our globalized world. And I find it encouraging to see on this occasion a sort of near consensus, forging on the importance of science as a basis of health policies and on the priority given to the safety of people over other considerations, including economic considerations, even at high cost. Public health is a political choice that most countries have made in this crisis against competing priorities and interests. Now, to say that the virus affects us all doesn't mean, however, that it affects us all equally. What we have seen in the last few months is countries competing for resources, whether it was for masks, for example, as we saw, unfortunately, in the first wave of the pandemic here in Europe, diagnostic tests, or now vaccines. It is not difficult to it is not difficult to guess in such a competition who will emerge as a winner in the absence of global regulation, in the absence of global governance, and of common resources for common goods. And since Jerry de Montmoyal and Dr. Tedros started discussing this topic, let me say that to me, public health is a public good, because public health is a collective property that depends on the structural, the social, the political forces that produce health of the population. Now, as again already said in the introduction, this unprecedented crisis we're facing requires unprecedented global solidarity. Let me remind everyone that is in his wake-up call last July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the global community to, and I quote, move from international chaos to the construction of an international global community capable of meeting and solving tomorrow's challenges. And obviously, when it comes to health and to pandemics, a pandemic response that would be rooted in global cooperation would make everyone much safer. The pandemic demands an emergency response, but it must also encourage us beyond the emergency to lay the foundations for a world that is more united and more resilient in the face of challenges, which will have to go beyond the current geopolitical constructions to involve more of the major emerging players, China obviously, but also India, Russia, Latin America and Africa. The crisis Europe and the world are facing is not only about health, it's about politics too. And this is why today for the first time WPC is dedicating a site conference to health. Our session today will run in two parts. First, Professor Antoine Flauot will present us an overview of the pandemic from an epidemiological and global public health perspective. And that will be followed by specific questions and answers that you may direct to him and to his presentation. We will then proceed to a panel discussion with eminent participants from the pharmaceutical industry, the social protection sector, public health and the UN global angle where questions and answers with the panelists, between the panelists and between the attendees and the panelists will follow all four speakers' presentations. The objective of this session as I see it is to discuss the first lessons from the COVID-19 crisis at the intersect of public health at national level, global health at global level, health systems, social protection, innovation to generate health commodities, medicines and vaccines, economy, politics, the global order and global governance.