March 23, 2021

Andrew Campbell 

At March 22’s press conference, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), criticized the COVAX has become more freakish as the growing inequity of the quantity of COVID-19 vaccines distributed to rich countries. He also described worldwide inequity remained a catastrophic moral failure in COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

Under the circumstances, some countries have been taking vaccines for the entire population, while others have no shots available. Dr. Ghebreyesus has called worldwide administrators on numerous occasions for urgent steps to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, the WHO Chief has explained that WHO has been trying, by all means, day and night to increase the production and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

In addition, WHO hosted a meeting on March 19 on enhancing genomic sequencing of the COVID-19 and its variants in order to help to monitor its evolution in many mutations across the world. According to a piece of promising information released by the WHO, 264 candidate vaccines are currently being developed worldwide in which 82 are underway in clinical trials in Britain, China, Germany, Russia, and the US.

Earlier, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden suspended AstraZeneca’s shot as concerns over a number of rare blood clotting incidents. However, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan considered AstraZeneca posed no increased risk of blood clots and assured it a very good COVID-19 vaccine for all ages. Dr. Ghebreyesus also praised the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as safe and effective and the only vaccine producer, a significant contribution to vaccine equity, committed to nonprofits amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photo:Webshot.