The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Edros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Friday May 14, 2021, countries to give up vaccinating children and adolescents against COVID-19 and donating doses thus released to the Covax system to redistribute them to disadvantaged countries, stressing that on the train where things go, the second year of the pandemic ” first.
Despite the deployment of vaccination, the number of deaths linked to the COVVI-19 will be “to the train where things go higher in 2021 than in 2020, he warned, the pandemic having left at least 3.3 million deaths worldwide since the end of December 2019 while the appearance of variants as well as the unequal progression of vaccination campaigns depending on the country continue to worry.
The WHO boss thus called on countries to give up vaccinating children and adolescents and donating doses thus released to the COVAX system (the international system set up to guarantee equitable access to vaccines) to redistribute them to disadvantaged countries.
For months, he has denounced vaccination nationalism, which with regard to the shortage of doses available deprived of many countries to be able to protect including the most vulnerable and caregivers, when the European Union or the United States promises to vaccinate a vast majority of their population by summer.
Noting that many countries were still plagued by explosive infection rates, such as India but also Nepal, Sri Lanka or some countries on the American continent, the Director General stressed that the COVAX system was deprived of a large proportion of vaccines which he thought he could distribute in the 2nd quarter of this year.
