Tag: covax

Thedemand comes as, last week, the US, Canada and Switzerland laid out plans to begin coronavirus vaccine shots for adolescents….reports Asian Lite News

Rich nations must delay their plans to vaccinate their children and teenagers against Covid-19 and instead donate the jabs to low-income countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

“In a handful of rich countries, which bought up the majority of the vaccine supply, lower risk groups are now being vaccinated,” WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a virtual conference in Geneva on Friday.

“I understand why some countries want to vaccinate their children and adolescents, but right now I urge them to reconsider and to instead donate vaccines to Covax,” Ghebreyesus said.

The statement comes as, last week, the US, Canada and Switzerland laid out plans to begin coronavirus vaccine shots for adolescents.

The global distribution of Covid vaccines remains vastly uneven. Four of the world’s high-income countries, with a population of 1.2 billion (16 per cent of global population), account for 4.6 billion doses (53 per cent of all purchased doses). On the other hand, the low-income countries hold just 770 million doses, according to a study from the Duke Global Health Innovation Centre. The US is expected to have 300 million or more coronavirus vaccine excess doses by the end of July, the study found.

The US, followed by China and India have administered the highest number of vaccine doses overall. But, a few countries in Africa are yet to get started on vaccination campaigns.

ALSO READ: Indian variant: WHO warns against hasty conclusions

“The fact that so many are still not protected is a sad reflection on the gross distortion in access to vaccines across the globe,” Ghebreyesus said. At present, only 0.3 per cent of vaccine supply is going to low-income countries. Thus, many low and lower-middle income countries do not have vaccine supply to even immunise health and care workers, he lamented.

“Trickle down vaccination is not an effective strategy for fighting a deadly respiratory virus,” he said.

The global fair-access schemeACovax is co-led by the WHO, the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), with the UN children’s fund, Unicef, as key implementation partner, has been signed by 92 of the world’s poor countries.

The scheme aimed to first inoculate 20 per cent of the population in these countries starting with health workers.

“Saving lives and livelihoods with a combination of public health measures and vaccination — not one or the other — is the only way out of the pandemic,” Ghebreyesus said.

“Covid-19 has already cost more than 3.3 million lives and we’re on track for the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first,” he stated.

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WHO urged populations to continue practicing the infection control measures as vaccines represent just one approach to dealing with Covid-19…reports Asian Lite News

Close to 40 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have already been distributed through the COVAX Facility, half of them in Africa, but vaccine supplies are still stalled due to “tremendous demand” especially in India, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

COVAX, a WHO-led program to secure equitable access to vaccines for low and middle-income countries, “has, as of today, distributed just over 38.7 million doses and we expect to get past 40 million doses later this week,” Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s senior advisor to the director general on organisational change, said at a press conference on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Over 40 countries on the African continent will have received doses by the end of this week, and they will receive nearly half of the doses from COVAX,” he added.

However, the COVAX Facility has experienced major difficulties in accessing vaccines, especially since the Serum Institute of India, “one of the main producers that supply the COVAX Facility” according to Aylward, cut back on AstraZeneca vaccine deliveries due to the “tremendous demand” created by the “escalating outbreak in India.”

Also read:WHO lashes out at Europe’s slow vax rollout

One solution suggested by the WHO to ensure proper immunization is to administer the second AstraZeneca dose after “12 weeks” or even a bit later, Aylward said.

At the same time, the WHO urged populations to continue practicing the infection control measures as vaccines represent just one approach to dealing with Covid-19.

“There was a nine per cent increase in transmissions last week, the seventh consecutive week when we’ve seen an increase in transmission, and a five percent increase in the number of deaths,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19.

“We are at a critical point of the pandemic right now,” she stressed.

Also read:WHO chief condemns global vax divide