UN health agency urges nations to donate 250 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine

(United Nations News) Some two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed globally but only 0.5 per cent have reached low-income countries where frontline health workers and the elderly have yet to receive a shot, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

“This week, we’ll probably pass the two billion doses – if we have not already passed it…in terms of number of doses of these vaccines, these new COVID vaccines that have actually been developed. And these have been distributed now in over 212 countries,” said Dr Bruce Aylward, Head of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) Hub.

Dr. Aylward, who is also Senior Advisor to the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that of those two billion doses, “over 75 per cent” had gone to just 10 countries, notably China, the US and India.

This trio “account for about 60 per cent of those doses”, said Dr Aylward, speaking via Zoom, adding that “at the other end of that spectrum” only about “point five per cent of doses” had reached the lowest income countries, which account for about 10 per cent of world population.

Read more a: United Nations News

Source: CARICOM TODAY