COVID-19 will stay ‘Drag on Deep’ in 2022, WHO warns

World: WHO – World Health Organization has stated that the COVID-19 outbreak will long last even in 2022 as most of the impoverished nations are not able to receive the vaccines.

A senior leader at the WHO – Dr Bruce Aylward, highlighting the above statement, cited that, “This means the COVID-19 crisis can easily drag on deep into 2022.”

Apart from this, the leader appealed to the rich nations to give up their places in the ‘queue for vaccines’ in order that pharmaceutical companies could prioritise the poor and needy countries instead.

He further added that the wealthy nations needed to “stocktake” where they were with their donation commitments made at summits such as the – G7 meeting in St Ives this summer.

Following the statement, he noted, “I can tell you we are not on track. We really need to speed up the vaccination process, or you all are aware of what will happen. This COVID-19 outbreak is going to go on for – a year longer than it needs to.”

A data has been released by the People’s Vaccine – an alliance of charities according to which 1 in 7 of the doses that the pharmaceutical companies and wealthy nations have promised to give are in reality reaching the needy countries.

As per the data, a higher number of COVID-19 vaccines are being provided to wealthy or middle-income countries across the world.

Global Health Adviser of OXFAM – Rohit Malpani, confirmed that Canada and the UK were technically allowed to get vaccines via this route having paid into the Covax mechanism, but he noted that it was still “morally indefensible” given that they had both received millions of doses through their own bilateral agreements.

The UK got 539,370 Pfizer doses, while Canada has received around one million AstraZeneca doses of the vaccine.