Updated:
To supply the world population with vaccines and drugs against Covid-19, further billions will be needed by September 2022.
Geneva – To supply the world population with vaccines and drugs against Covid-19, further billions are needed by September 2022. The World Health Organization (WHO) put the need on Thursday in Geneva at 23.4 billion dollars (around 20 billion euros). This could prevent at least five million potential deaths and save the world economy more than $ 5.3 billion.
According to the WHO, the uneven distribution of vaccines and drugs will prevent the corona pandemic from coming to an end soon. This increases the risk that new and more dangerous variants of the Sars-CoV-2 virus will develop, against which previous vaccines and drugs are not effective enough. So far, only 0.5 percent of the available vaccines have been used in the poorest countries, although they make up nine percent of the population.
“If the 6.8 billion vaccine doses that were administered had been distributed fairly, we would have achieved our goal of vaccinating 40 percent of the population in each country,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. According to the WHO Africa Office, only ten percent of the 54 countries in the Africa region will achieve the 40 percent target by the end of the year if not significantly more is done.
The money should flow into the ACT accelerator. This is the program for global solutions for everything to do with the coronavirus that the United Nations launched 18 months ago. ACT is the abbreviation for “Access to Covid Tools”. These include the Covax vaccination program as well as programs for Covid tests and Covid drugs.
Covax has so far delivered more than 425 million vaccine doses to 144 countries. The program has invested in vaccine research with contributions from rich countries, and in return all countries have been able to purchase orders through Covax. Most rich countries have had most of their vaccine needs in separate contracts with manufacturers. That is why there is not enough vaccine available for Covax, criticizes the WHO. (dpa)
#worldwide #corona #vaccine #drugs #Covid19 #billions #needed