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‘Toxic mixture’: WHO warns countries with low vaccination coverage against opening up economies
WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhnom Ghebreyesus said that variants are winning the race against vaccines because of inequitable vaccine production and distribution.
World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies programme head Michael Ryan on Wednesday urged countries to take extreme caution when reopening economies amid the threat presented by the Delta variant of Sars-Cov-2. During a news conference in Geneva, Ryan warned countries with low levels of vaccination coverage against opening up, saying the presence of variants could start filling the hospitals again.
“Countries opening up who have very low levels of vaccination coverage in the presence of variants is a real toxic mixture for your hospitals filling up again. And this is something that must absolutely be avoided,” said Ryan.
Commenting on Britain’s decision to remove most of the coronavirus-induced restrictions, the senior WHO official said all countries are trying to reach a balance of measures that allow their societies to open up while trying to maintain an element of control over the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). He said that the United Kingdom, which has achieved a high rate of vaccination, is “very alert to the threat represented by variants, especially the Delta variant.” Ryan, however, also stressed that countries need to be extremely cautious and have to be ready to step back.
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At the press briefing, WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhnom Ghebreyesus reiterated the need to share vaccines with low- and lower-middle-income countries. The WHO chief criticised the decision of some countries with high vaccination coverage to roll out booster shots in the coming months and drop public health social measures. The top WHO official said that variants are winning the race against vaccines because of inequitable vaccine production and distribution.
"Vaccine nationalism, where a handful of nations have taken the lion’s share, is morally indefensible and an ineffective public health strategy against a respiratory virus that is mutating quickly and becoming increasingly effective at moving from human-to-human," said Ghebreyesus.
“It didn’t have to be this way and it doesn’t have to be this way going forward," he added.
