The “vast majority” of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths worldwide are currently unvaccinated, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference.
“We should be very clear that vaccines remain effective against both the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus,” he emphasized.
“It must be a priority to reach 40% vaccination in all countries as soon as possible and to get that rate to reach 70% by mid-year,” added the Ethiopian.
Tedros reiterated his opposition to generalized booster programs for the entire population, warning that they “may prolong the pandemic rather than end it” by diverting vaccine supplies to countries with low immunization rates.
better distribution
Only half of the world’s countries managed to reach the established goal of vaccinating at least 40% of their population against Covid-19 by the end of the year, Tedros said.
This failure to meet the targets is occurring “while some countries are distributing booster doses to their entire population”, criticized Tedros, who earlier this year had already asked the most advanced countries in vaccination to postpone plans to administer supplementary doses .
The head of WHO also said that, with better distribution, the more than 8 billion doses administered so far worldwide would have been sufficient to reach the 40% desired in all countries, prioritizing risk groups such as health professionals, elderly and people with comorbidities.
“It is difficult to understand how it is possible that, a year after the development of the first vaccines against Covid-19, three out of four health professionals in Africa are still not vaccinated,” added Tedros.
However, the director-general stressed that the Covax program, through which WHO distributes vaccines mainly to developing countries, is gradually increasing its supply and accelerating its delivery, having managed to send around 400 million doses in the last three months, approximately the same amount as in the previous six months.
“Our analysis indicates that the supply of vaccines will be sufficient to be able to vaccinate the entire world population and give doses to all risk groups by the first quarter of 2022”, predicted Tedros.
While the global average vaccination rate is above 56%, in low-income countries it drops to 8%, according to data from national health networks.
The countries with the highest vaccination rates in the world are the United Arab Emirates (90% with a complete vaccination schedule), Portugal (89%), Singapore (87%), Chile (85%), Cuba (83%), South Korea (82%) and Spain (80%).
“The year of the end of the pandemic”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also told Wednesday’s press conference that 2022 “should be the year when the Covid-19 pandemic ends, but also the beginning of a new era of solidarity.”
“It was a very difficult 12 months for everyone, but we cannot allow it to be a wasted year,” he argued.
The Ethiopian biologist also urged the global community to learn lessons from a year in which more than 3.5 million people died from Covid-19, more than in 2020.
“The year 2021 has given us many reasons to be hopeful, in the form of vaccines that undoubtedly saved many lives, but on the other hand, the inequality in the distribution of doses also cost many lives,” added Tedros.
“Covid-19 continues to cause about 50,000 deaths a week, and as omicron becomes the dominant variant, we have to take extra precautions,” he warned.
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