We’re at war with Covid: UN
UN chief Antonio Guterres tells WHO assembly it’s time for the ‘logic and urgency of a war economy’
GENEVA/NICOSIA: The UN chief on Monday declared the world “at war” against Covid-19, as India’s death toll crossed 300,000 and Japan opened its first mass vaccination centres just two months before the start of the Olympics.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres urged governments to apply wartime logic to stark inequalities in response to the pandemic, warning the crisis was far from over despite rapidly advancing vaccination roll-outs in wealthy parts of the world.
Guterres urged recognition of the fact that “we are at war with a virus”, adding, “We need the logic and urgency of a war economy, to boost the capacity of our weapons.”
The UN chief said, “Unless we act now, we face a situation in which rich countries vaccinate the majority of their people and open their economies, while the virus continues to cause deep suffering by circling and mutating in the poorest countries.”
Speaking alongside Guterres at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual assembly in Geneva, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that he wants 10% of every country’s population vaccinated by September. Tedros paid tribute to the estimated 115,000 health care workers who have died from Covid-19. “They have saved countless lives and fought for others who, despite their best efforts, slipped away,” he said.
The pandemic is being perpetuated by a “scandalous inequity” in vaccine distribution, the WHO chief said. He warned that no country should assume that it’s “out of the woods”, no matter its vaccination rate. “The world remains in a very dangerous situation,” the WHO chief said at the assembly of health ministers from its 194 member states.
Fearing that more cases have been reported this year than in 2020, he said, “On current trends, the number of deaths will overtake last year’s total within the next three weeks. This is very tragic.”
He said more than 75% of all vaccines had been administered in just 10 countries. “There is no diplomatic way to say it. A small group of countries that make and buy the majority of the world’s vaccines controls the fate of the rest of the world.”
British woman dies in Cyprus after AZ jab
A 39-year-old British woman died in a Cypriot hospital after a blood clotting incident after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) said. Charalambos Charilaou, spokesperson for the state health services, told CNA the European Medicines Agency will probe the death.
The woman, treated at Nicosia General Hospital, received the first dose of the vaccine on May 6 in the resort town of Paphos. The woman, who was not named, suffered symptoms a few days later. Malta has vaccinated 70% of its adult population with at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot, becoming the first EU country to achieve so-called herd immunity, health minister Chris Fearne said on Monday.
The tiny Mediterranean island has had an average of three new virus cases each day in the past week, with the test positivity rate at a low of 0.2%. Two new cases were reported on Monday.