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Antonio Guterres urges wealthy nations to lead the global effort to ensure that people in all countries are vaccinated against COVID as soon as possible.
The head of the United Nations has harshly criticized the “wildly unequal and unfair” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that only 10 countries have administered 75 percent of all vaccines.
Addressing a high-level meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Antonio Guterres said that 130 countries have not received a single dose of vaccine.
“At this critical moment, vaccine equity is the greatest moral test before the global community,” he said.
Guterres called for an urgent Global Vaccination Plan to bring together those with the power to ensure a fair distribution of vaccines – scientists, vaccine producers, and those who can finance the effort – to ensure that all people in all nations get vaccinated as soon as possible. possible.
The secretary general also called on the main economic powers of the Group of 20 to establish an emergency working group that should have the capacity to bring together “pharmaceutical companies and key players in industry and logistics.”
Guterres said a meeting on Friday of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries “can create momentum to mobilize the necessary financial resources.”
In a report from UN headquarters, Al Jazeera diplomatic editor James Bays said there was broad agreement on potential future problems in the fight against the pandemic due to the uneven distribution of vaccines.
“Rich countries are vaccinating people, but many other parts of the world are not. You are never going to get rid of COVID-19 if you have it spreading in some parts of the world and potentially mutating, and potentially in the future making vaccines not working, ”Bays said.
“Less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccines so far worldwide have been administered in the 32 countries currently facing the most serious humanitarian crises.”
Call for a ceasefire
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, whose country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month, urged the most powerful UN body to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire in conflict zones to allow for the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines.
The UK said more than 160 million people are at risk of being excluded from coronavirus vaccines because they live in countries mired in conflict and instability, including Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.
“Humanitarian organizations and UN agencies need the full backing of the council in order to carry out the work we ask of them,” said Barbara Woodward, UK Ambassador to the UN.
Woodward said ceasefires had previously been used to carry out vaccines, signaling a two-day hiatus in fighting in Afghanistan in 2001 that allowed 35,000 health workers and volunteers to vaccinate 5.7 million children under the age of five years against polio.
Thirteen ministers were scheduled to address the meeting on how to improve access to COVID-19, including the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
On Tuesday, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico would emphasize the importance of equitable access for all countries to COVID-19 vaccines at the council meeting.
It was very critical that countries where vaccines are produced have high vaccination rates, while Latin American countries have trouble getting injections.
The World Health Organization’s COVAX program, an ambitious project to purchase and distribute coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poorest people, no longer achieved its goal of starting vaccination in poor countries at the same time as the vaccines in rich countries.
Numerous developing countries have rushed in recent weeks to sign their private agreements to buy vaccines, unwilling to wait for COVAX.
Woodward said the UK supports reserving 5 per cent of COVAX doses as a “last resort” to ensure high-risk populations have access to COVID-19 vaccines.
The coronavirus has officially infected more than 109 million people and has killed at least 2.4 million of them. But many countries have yet to start vaccination programs, and even wealthy nations face vaccine dose shortages as manufacturers scramble to increase production.
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