Covid-19: “We get new variants if we don’t vaccinate all,” says UN chief
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the world must vaccinate everybody against Covid-19 to avert the emergence of new variants of the virus and ensure a way out of the pandemic.
Addressing the all-virtual Davos Agenda of World Economic Forum (WEF) on Monday, he said: “The last two years have demonstrated a simple but brutal truth — if we leave anyone behind, we leave everyone behind.”
“If we fail to vaccinate every person, we give rise to new variants that spread across borders and bring daily life and economies to a grinding halt,” he said, adding the international community needs to “confront the pandemic with equity and fairness.”
Global solidarity is missing, he remarked.
The UN chief noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) unveiled a strategy last autumn to vaccinate 40 percent of the global population by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by the middle of this year (2022).
“We are nowhere near these targets,” Guterres regretted. “Vaccination rates in high-income countries are, shamefully, seven times higher than in African countries. We need vaccine equity, now,” he added.
He said pharmaceutical companies should “stand in solidarity with developing countries by sharing licenses, know-how, and technology so we can all find a way out of this pandemic.”
