By our senior reporter
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyes , Director General of World Health Organization is appealing to developed countries from promoting Covid19 vaccine nationalism. Its not in the best interests of leaders just to focus on narrow nationalistic goals when we live in an interconnected world and the Covid19 virus is mutating quickly.
“Its unconscionable that some Covid19 vaccine producing companies are reporting record profits and some countries are offering boosters while so many people remain unprotected. No one is safe until everyone is safe”, said Tedros WHO Boss.
He said there’s little to be gained by a small number of companies making big profits if the world continues to lose trillions of dollars by going in and out of severe restrictions on their populations, please share doses, share licenses, technology and know-how. Waive intellectual property.
So far 31.8% of the world population has received atleast one dose of a Covid19 vaccine and 23.9% is fully vaccinated. 4.8 billion dozes have been administered globally and 34.54 million are now administered each day.
Only 1.3% of people in low income countries have received atleast one doze. To bring this pandemic to an end, a large share of the world needs to be immune to the virus. The safest way to achieve this is with a vaccine.
Vaccines are a technology that humanity has often relied on in the past to bring down the death toll of infectious diseases.
Within less than 12 months after the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic, several research teams rose to the challenge and developed vaccines that protect from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Now the challenge is to make these vaccines available to people around the world. It will be key that people in all countries not just in rich countries, receive the required protection.
