Humanity fails in ensuring equal access to vaccines from coronavirus infection: more than 82% of 832 million vaccinations in the world are now on countries with high and medium incomes, while on low-income states – only 0.2%. This was stated at a meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated to the issue of access to vaccines, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adan Greesus.
“Equality in the issue of vaccines is a challenge of our time. And we will fail,” – quotes the chapter of the WHO TASS.
“Some countries that have been waiting for a vaccine through the COVAX mechanism did not receive anything,” continued the head of WHO, adding that a number of states do not receive a second part of the quotas allocated on them, which “confesses their plans concerning the second Vaccination Stage. “
It was assumed that the supply volumes through COVAX will have reached more than 100 million doses to date, but in fact, only 40 million
is distributed.
Gebresus in this regard called the countries that reserved excess volumes of vaccines for their population, “to immediately make COVAX donations.” The general director also spoke in favor of “studying all the options for increasing production” drugs for immunization, calling among possible ways a voluntary transfer of licenses for the production of vaccines to other countries. Another important step, according to the head of WHO, could be “investing in the local vaccine production.”