At summit, WHO promises to end vaccine inequity

As of today, more cases have been reported so far this year than in the whole of 2020.

GENEVA/NICOSIA: The Covid-19 pandemic is being perpetuated by a “scandalous inequity” in vaccine distribution, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday as he set new targets for protecting people in the poorest countries.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that no country should assume that it’s “out of the woods”, no matter its vaccination rate, as long as the Sars-cov-2 virus and its variants spread elsewhere.

“The world remains in a very dangerous situation,” Tedros told the opening of the annual assembly of health ministers from its 194 member states.

Saying that more cases have been reported this year than in the whole of last year, 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 control the fate of the rest of the world.”

The Covax facility, run by the WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance, has delivered 72 million vaccine doses to 125 countries and economies since February barely sufficient for 1% of their populations, Tedros said.

He urged countries to donate vaccine doses to Covax to enable 10% of the populations of all countries to be inoculated by September and 30% by year-end. This meant vaccinating 250 million more people in just four months, he said.

“This is crucial to stop disease and death, keep our health care workers safe, reopen our societies and economies,” Tedros said.

The WHO chief also revealed that at least 115,000 health and care workers have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. “For almost 18 months, health and care workers all over the world have stood in the breach between life and death,” Tedros said.

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 on Monday.

Charalambos Charilaou, spokesperson for the state health services, told CNA that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) would investigate the death.

The woman, treated at Nicosia General Hospital’s intensive care unit, received the first dose of the vaccine on May 6 in the resort town of Paphos on the western coast of the Mediterranean island.

The woman, who was not named, suffered symptoms a few days later.