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Monday, February 17, 2025

WHO warns against rich nations hoarding jabs to fight Omicron

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1166 days ago
20211209
Dr Manjul Shukla transfers Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine into a syringe at a mobile vaccination clinic in Worcester, Massachusetts on December 2, 2021. (File photo courtesy AL JAZEERA via Steven Senne/AP Photo)

Dr Manjul Shukla transfers Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine into a syringe at a mobile vaccination clinic in Worcester, Massachusetts on December 2, 2021. (File photo courtesy AL JAZEERA via Steven Senne/AP Photo)

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

 

■ Key prob­lem for in­ter­na­tion­al dose-shar­ing pro­gramme is wealthy coun­tries do­nat­ing COVID-19 vac­cines with short shelf life, WHO says ■

 

(AL JAZEERA) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion of­fi­cial (WHO) has warned that wealthy coun­tries may start hoard­ing COVID-19 vac­cines again, threat­en­ing glob­al sup­plies as they seek to shore up stocks to fight the new Omi­cron vari­ant of coro­n­avirus.

The com­ments on Thurs­day by the agency’s vac­cine di­rec­tor, Kate O’Brien, come as sup­plies to an in­ter­na­tion­al dose-shar­ing pro­gramme run by the WHO and vac­cine char­i­ty GAVI have in­creased in the past few months due to do­na­tions from wealthy coun­tries and af­ter In­dia eased lim­its on ex­ports of vac­cines.

New Del­hi’s move has meant the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia has re­sumed ship­ments of the As­traZeneca vac­cine it makes, main­ly for the pro­gramme known as CO­V­AX.

“We have to make sure that it [high­er ship­ments] con­tin­ues,” O’Brien said in a brief­ing.

“As we head in­to what­ev­er the Omi­cron sit­u­a­tion is go­ing to be, there is risk that the glob­al sup­ply is again go­ing to re­vert to high-in­come coun­tries hoard­ing vac­cines” as they seek to pro­tect their abil­i­ty to in­oc­u­late their cit­i­zens, she said lat­er.

O’Brien al­so said a key prob­lem for CO­V­AX has been wealthy coun­tries do­nat­ing COVID-19 vac­cines with a rel­a­tive­ly short shelf life while not­ing that wastage rates were al­so high in some wealthy coun­tries.

CO­V­AX has shipped 610 mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines to 144 coun­tries or ter­ri­to­ries since Feb­ru­ary, ac­cord­ing to GAVI.

Mean­while, John Nken­ga­song, the di­rec­tor of the Africa Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, said African gov­ern­ments “will not have a choice” but to re­sort to COVID-19 vac­cine man­dates if their cit­i­zens do not hur­ry to get the in­creas­ing­ly avail­able dos­es.

The flow of dos­es to coun­tries on the con­ti­nent has grown but vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and the short shelf life of some do­na­tions has cre­at­ed new pres­sures.

“We don’t need to get there if we just do the right thing,” Nken­ga­song said of vac­cine man­dates. He called any lack of in­ter­est in vac­cine up­take “ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate” af­ter African of­fi­cials have fought for months against dra­mat­ic vac­cine in­equal­i­ty be­tween their na­tions and rich­er ones around the world.

Africa re­mains the world’s least vac­ci­nat­ed con­ti­nent against COVID-19, with less than 8 per­cent of its pop­u­la­tion ful­ly jabbed.

On­ly six African coun­tries have met the glob­al tar­get of vac­ci­nat­ing 40 per­cent of their pop­u­la­tions against COVID-19 by the end of this year, and “this is sim­ply dan­ger­ous and 

COVID-19United Nations


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