Poor nations given 0.3 per cent of COVID-19 shots: WHO chief

A health worker inoculates Maximiliana Quispe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19, at her house in Lima, Peru on Wednesday. Pic/AFP

The head of the World Health Organization says more than 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally but 82 per cent of them were given in high and upper-middle-income countries.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says just 0.3 per cent of all vaccines administered so far were given to people in low-income countries. "That's the reality," Tedros told an online health conference hosted by Portugal on Thursday.

He said access to vaccines "is one of the defining challenges of the pandemic" and that public health is "the foundation of social, economic and political stability."

‘UK's 3rd wave disappearing due to lockdown'

The UK's third wave of the pandemic is disappearing due to the lockdown efforts and as a result, the country may be at or close to the bottom of the deadly disease levels, according to senior medical expert and government adviser Professor Jonathan Van-Tam.

US advises its citizens in India to leave

The US has advised its citizens not to travel to India or to leave as soon as it is safe to do so and authorised the voluntary departure of family members of its employees in the Indian missions, saying the access to all types of medical care is becoming severely limited in the country amid a massive surge in COVID-19 cases.

UN agencies providing critical supplies

The UN team in India is supporting the country's authorities by providing critical supplies and its agencies are procuring thousands of oxygen concentrators, oxygen generating plants and other essential equipment as well as helping set up mobile hospital units, a spokesperson for the UN chief said.

Africa CDC chief watches India surge with alarm

Africa's top public health official says the continent is "watching with total disbelief" what is happening in India as it struggles with a devastating resurgence in COVID-19 cases. Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director John Nkengasong warned that the African continent, which has roughly the same population as India and fragile health care systems, "must be very, very prepared" because it could see the same scenario now unfolding in the South Asian country. "We do not have enough health care workers. We do not have enough oxygen," he told reporters.Nkengasong also urged African nations to prevent mass gatherings. Africa's vaccine situation is also closely linked to India. Just 17 mn vaccine doses have been administered across the African continent, he said, for a population of some 1.3 bn.

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