MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th December, 2021) The global vaccine supply gap makes it impossible to reach a 40% vaccination rate in more than 50 countries by the end of the year, one of the main WHO goals in the fight against COVID-19, Katherine O'Brien, Director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Wednesday.
"There are over 50 countries that are unlikely to meet the target of 40% coverage and this is really primarily about supply and not about supply in the past month or six weeks, obviously, but having a vaccination of 40% requires a program over a period of time," O'Brien said during a virtual press conference with the latest developments on the pandemic and the Omicron variant.
In October, the WHO launched the Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022, which outlines the main goals for vaccination in the world, including the key goal of achieving a vaccination rate of 40% in all countries by the end of 2021.
The WHO and the United Nations declared equity in global access to COVID-19 vaccines a priority at the beginning of the pandemic, even before any vaccines had been developed. Since then, wealthier countries have gone on to hoard vaccine supplies amounting to several times their own populations, while many poorer countries have been unable to distribute them to all their regions. Additionally, pharma giants in the US and Western Europe have fought vehemently to oppose any attempt to lift patents on production that would allow countries to produce the vaccines cheaply and domestically.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on November 29 called the unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines the precursor to the emergence of new coronavirus variants.
