Globally, the number of vaccinations against COVID-19 has now overtaken the number of reported infections, but more than three-quarters of vaccinations are in just 10 countries, the World Health Organization chief said Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn one sense, that\u2019s good news and a remarkable achievement in such a short timeframe,\u201d said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus at a twice-weekly webinar from the health body\u2019s headquarters in Geneva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The more 75% of those vaccinations in just 10 countries account for almost 60% of global GDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that around 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, have not administered a single dose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tedros did not spell out any figures for numbers of jabs, but the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine said more than 105 million COVID-19 cases worldwide have been confirmed with nearly 2.29 million deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The WHO chief said all governments must protect their people and that some countries had already vaccinated large proportions of their population who are at lower risk of severe disease or death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut once countries with vaccines have vaccinated their own health workers and older people, the best way to protect the rest of their own population is to share vaccines so other countries can do the same,\u201d said Tedros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s because the longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tedros warned that unless the world suppresses the virus everywhere, \u201cwe could end up back at square one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, he said COVAX that aims to distribute novel coronavirus vaccines equitably published its forecast for distributing doses to participating countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a very exciting moment. Countries are ready to go, but the vaccines aren\u2019t there. We need countries to share doses once they have finished vaccinating health workers and older people,\u201d said Tedros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut we also need a massive scale-up in production,\u201d said the WHO chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, Tedros said the French pharma company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support the US-German Pfizer\/BioNTech vaccine production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe call on other companies to follow this example,\u201d said Tedros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Globally, the number of vaccinations against COVID-19 has now overtaken the number of reported infections, but more than three-quarters of vaccinations are in just 10 countries, the World Health Organization chief said Friday. \u201cIn one sense, that\u2019s good news and a remarkable achievement in such […]<\/p>\n
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