Wednesday, August 4th, 2021. My name is Tarik Jasarevic, and I will introduce you to the speakers with us here today at WHO headquarters in Geneva. With us are Dr. Tedros, WHO Director-General, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead on COVID-19, Dr. Mariangela Simao, Assistant Director-General, Access to Medicines and Health Products, Dr. Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to the Director-General and the Lead on the ACT Accelerator, Dr. Kate O'Brien, Director, Immunisation, Vaccines, and Biologicals. Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Emergencies Programme, will join online during this briefing.
Dr. Tedros. Dr. Tedros. As always, we have simultaneous translation in the six UN languages, Portuguese and Hindi, and journalists may use those languages to ask their questions. With this, I'll give the floor to Dr. Tedros for his opening remarks.
TAG Thank you. Thank you, Tarik. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. In January of this year, a midwife from Uganda called Harriet Nayiga joined our press conference to talk about her experience as a health worker during the pandemic.
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While vaccines were being rolled out in the wealthiest countries, Harriet was one of many health workers in Africa and worldwide who was still waiting for her turn to be vaccinated. At the time, Uganda, like much of Africa, had relatively few cases of COVID-19.
, This morning Harriet sent us this email. I quote; I got my first shot and am yet to receive the second. The situation was tough for the last two months, where over 2,000 people have died so far, including health workers. But starting in May of this year, Uganda experienced a surge in cases and deaths as variants tore through a largely unvaccinated population. But starting in May of this year, Uganda experienced a surge in cases and deaths as variants tore through a largely unvaccinated population. We hope that the vaccines will reach different parts of the country and hope that people will be responsible enough and go for vaccination.
She says, otherwise, COVID is spreading though people are now moving to work to earn a living since the majority depend on hand-to-mouth; end of quote.
This is the reality for hundreds of millions of people around the world. They cannot afford to stay at home. They work to eat. These populations need vaccines urgently, especially health workers, older people, and other vulnerable groups.
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Yet even while hundreds of millions of people are still waiting for their first dose, some rich countries are moving towards booster doses. So far, more than four billion vaccine doses have been administered globally. More than 80% have gone to high and upper-middle-income countries, even though they account for less than half of the world's population.
I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the delta variant, but we cannot, and we should not accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it. In contrast, the world's most vulnerable people remain unprotected.
In late May, I called for global support for a sprint to September to enable a country to vaccinate at least 10% of its population by the end of September. We're now more than halfway to that target date, but we're not on track.
When I issued that challenge in May, high-income countries had administered around 50 doses for every 100 people. Since then, that number has doubled. High-income countries have now administered almost 100 doses for every 100 people.
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Meanwhile, low-income countries have only administered 1.5 doses for every 150 due to lack of supply.
We need an urgent reversal from most vaccines going to high-income countries to the majority going to low-income countries. Accordingly, WHO is calling for a moratorium on boosters until at least the end of September to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated.
We need everyone's cooperation to make that happen, especially the handful of companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines. The G20 has a vital leadership role as the countries that are the biggest producers, the biggest consumers, and the biggest donors of COVID-19 vaccines.
It's no understatement to say that the course of the pandemic depends on the leadership of the G20. I repeat it's no understatement to say that the course of the pandemic depends on the leadership of the G20 countries.
One month from now, the G20 health ministers will meet ahead of the G20 summit in October. I call on them to make concrete commitments to support WHO's global vaccination targets. We call on vaccine producers to prioritize COVAX. We call on everyone with influence - Olympic athletes, investors, business leaders, faith leaders, and every individual in their own family and community to support our call for a moratorium on booster shots until at least the end of September.
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At the same time, we must all remember that vaccines are not the only tool. Indeed there is no single tool that will defeat the pandemic. We can only defeat it with a comprehensive approach of vaccines in combination with the proven public health and social measures that we know work. Tarik, back to you.
TJ Thank you, Dr. Tedros. Journalists who ask a question, please click the raise hand icon so we know that you have something to ask. We'll start with Jeremie Launch from Radio France Internationale. Jeremie, the floor is yours.
JE Thank you, Tarik. Good morning, everyone. I want to go back to what Dr. Tedros just said; the call for a moratorium on boosters until September. For instance, we know that some countries - Germany and Israel - already said that they're going to go for a third dose. So the question is, do you consider that those countries who will administer the third dose, booster dose, are failing in their duties?
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BA Thank you very much, Jeremie. Everyone has a role to play in getting global vaccination coverage up as high as possible, is what the Director-General is saying. The countries that provide financing and support to COVAX, countries such as Germany, are actually fantastic supporters.
But it's also the countries that are contracting doses; it's the suppliers, it's the countries that are achieving the high coverage already. All of these have an impact on the global supply situation. What the Director-General is calling for is trying to the right the extraordinary and increasing inequity that we have in the distribution of vaccines.
If you look at Africa as a continent, for example, we're at less than 5% coverage; in terms of two doses of vaccination, we're down around less than 2% coverage, actually. This contrasts with the numbers in North America, in Europe, in other areas where we're getting up towards 50% coverage now, which means in some of the most vulnerable areas of the world with the weakest health systems, the healthcare workers are working without protection, as we heard the story about Harriet just now from the Director-General; the older populations remain at high risk.
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So what we're calling for is for at least the next two months complete global solidarity around the goal of catching up with the rest of the world in terms of its immunization coverage. So the moratorium is all about for those who've decided that they may want to use booster doses, etc., trying to put a hold on those policies until and unless we get the rest of the world caught up.
Because we have to approach this, as the Director-General said from the very beginning... We're in a pandemic. The entire world is in the middle of this, and as we've seen from the emergence of variant after variant, we cannot get out of it unless the whole world gets out of it together.
With the huge disparity in vaccination coverage, we're simply not going to be able to achieve that. If we continue to put a strain on vaccines by now going into third, fourth doses, whatever, in areas that already have high coverage, we just will not be able to catch up.
So really, it's a call again for that global solidarity to achieve the coverage we need to have the biggest possible public health impact and get the world out of this crisis as rapidly as possible.
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