COVID-19: World at risk of 'vaccine apartheid', warns World Health Organization Chief

The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday warned that the World is at risk of 'vaccine apartheid' after mentioning the gap of COVID-19 vaccinations between high-income countries and low and lower-middle countries,

"I think I would go one step further and say not just that the world is at risk of vaccine apartheid; the world is in vaccine apartheid. As you know, high-income countries account for 15 per cent of the world's population but have 45 per cent of the world's vaccines. Low- and lower-middle countries account for almost half of the world's population but have received just 17 per cent of the world's vaccines. So the gap is really huge," said Ghebreyesus while speaking at the Paris Peace Forum Spring Meeting,

The WHO head also informed that at least 63 million doses of vaccines have been shipped to 124 countries and economies, but they represent just 0.5 per cent of the combined population of these nations. Ghebreyesus also noted that the basic problem of vaccine inequity was a lack of sharing, which could be resolved by sharing financial resources to fully fund the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, sharing doses with COVAX, and sharing technology to scale up the manufacturing of vaccines.

"Even now, some high-income countries are moving to vaccinate children and adolescents, while health workers, older people, and other at-risk groups around the world remain unvaccinated," he added.

Biden to boost world vaccine sharing commitment to 80M doses

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that the US will share an additional 80 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with the world in the coming six weeks, the White House said. The doses would come from existing U.S. production of Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccine stocks, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said more details would be released in the coming days. It would mark the first time that U.S.-controlled doses of vaccines authorized for use in the country will be shared overseas, as domestic demand for the shots has dropped significantly in recent weeks.

(With ANI Inputs)