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The World Health Organization (WHO) has criticized the G-7 countries’ pledges to distribute CoV vaccines to poorer countries as insufficient. It supports the G-7’s announced provision of one billion doses of vaccines, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday in Geneva. “This is a big help, but we need more and we need it faster.” Currently, he said, the virus is “advancing faster than the global distribution of vaccines.”
“More than 10,000 people are dying every day,” the WHO chief said. People depend on vaccines, he said, “and they need them now, not next year.” While industrialized countries are gradually returning to normal thanks to large-scale vaccination campaigns, vaccines are still in short supply in poorer regions of the world.
Doubts about G-7 commitment
The WHO has set a target of at least 70 percent of the world’s population being vaccinated against CoV by the time of the G-7 summit in Germany next year. Eleven billion vaccine doses are needed to achieve this, WHO chief Tedros said. “The G-7 and the G-20 can make that happen.”
The NGO Doctors Without Borders expressed doubts about the commitment of leading industrialized nations. It called for more clarity on exactly how long it would take “for them to translate their promises into action,” the aid organization said.
A large portion of the vaccine doses promised by the G-7 have been reserved for the COVAX initiative, which aims to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines around the world. Through COVAX, just over 87 million doses of vaccine have been distributed to 131 countries so far. That is significantly less than hoped for.
source: ORF.at/agencies/picture: pixabay.com
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