Chennai: Seventy-six wealthy nations are now committed to joining a global Covid-19 vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that aims to help buy and fairly distribute the shots, the project’s co-lead has said.
Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccines alliance, said the coordinated plan, known as COVAX, now has Japan, Germany, Norway and more than 70 other nations signed up, agreeing in principle to procure Covid-19 vaccines through the facility for their populations.
Recently, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blasted the increasing vaccine nationalism in responses to the virus, noting that “supply nationalism exacerbated the pandemic & contributed to the total failure of the global supply chain,” in the early stage of the virus’ spread.
“While there is a wish amongst leaders to protect their own people first, the response to this pandemic has to be collective. This is not charity, we have learned the hard way that the fastest way to end this pandemic and to reopen economies is to start by protecting the highest risk populations everywhere, rather than the entire populations of just some countries.”