The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday urged countries to immediately donate 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to the COVAX facility to ensure equal distribution of vaccines across the world, reported CGTN Africa.
During a media briefing, Ghebreyesus said increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines had resulted in a delay in supply for the Covax scheme that can deliver doses to poorer nations. He said that with almost a quarter of the year gone, 36 countries are still in queue to get their doses to begin their vaccination campaigns.
“Of those, 16 are scheduled to receive their first doses from COVAX within the next 15 days. That leaves 20 countries that are ready to go and waiting for vaccines. COVAX is ready to deliver, but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have,” the WHO head said.
He said getting all countries to start their vaccination campaigns by day 100 is a solvable problem. He said it can happen if COVAX gets 10 million doses immediately as an urgent stop-gap measure and the remaining countries can begin vaccinating their healthcare workers and older people within the next two weeks.
The WHO chief also urged vaccine manufacturers to scale up their production so extra vaccines could be donated to poorer countries. WHO-led Covax initiative intends to deliver vaccines to 92 of the world’s poorest nations and vaccinate up to 27 percent of these countries’ population by the end of this year.
Tedros also warned against counterfeit vaccines and urged people to stick to only government-run authorized vaccination programs. He said several ministries of health, national regulatory authorities, and public procurement organizations across the world had received suspicious offers to supply Covid-19 vaccines.
He urged the people to report any suspicious sale of vaccines to the national authorities, who will report it to the WHO.
