Shafaq News/ The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday there is a “clear problem” that low- and middle-income countries are not yet receiving supplies of COVID-19 vaccines and urged countries to stop striking bilateral deals with manufacturers.
“Rich countries have the majority of the supply,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in strongly-worded comments on vaccine nationalism at a Geneva news briefing.
“No country is exceptional and should cut the queue and vaccinate all their population while some remain with no supply of the vaccine,” he added.
He asked countries and manufacturers to stop making bilateral deals and called on those who have ordered excess doses to immediately hand them over to the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility.
The WHO said earlier this week the COVAX facility had raised $6 billion of the $7 billion that it has sought in 2021 to help finance deliveries to 92 developing nations with limited or no means to buy vaccines on their own.
While Tedros did not name countries, the European Union said it reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for 300 million additional doses of their COVID-19 vaccine in a move that would give the EU nearly half of the firms’ global output for 2021.
Until now, wealthier nations including Britain, the United States and Switzerland have been at the front of the queue for vaccine deliveries from companies including Pfizer and partner BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Nearly 88 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and around 1.9 million have died, according to a REUTERS tally.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
