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With the number of new COVID-19 cases around the world nearly doubling over the past two months — approaching the highest infection rate observed during the pandemic — the unequal distribution of vaccines is not only a moral outrage, but economically and epidemiologically self-defeating, the head of the United Nations health agency told a special ministerial meeting of the Economic and Social Council today.
“Vaccine equity is the challenge of our time,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the gathering in opening remarks. “And we are failing.”
Driving that point home, he reported that, of the 832 million vaccine doses administered, 82 per cent have gone to high- or upper‑middle-income countries, while only 0.2 per cent have been sent to their low-income counterparts. In high‑income countries alone, 1 in 4 people have been vaccinated, a ratio that drops precipitously to 1 in 500 in poorer countries.
https://press.un.org/en/2021/ecosoc7039.doc.htm