GENEVA: Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced that 172 countries have now signed up for a vaccine development programme.
The WHO Head said that this programme will ensure an equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. Watch the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lead a briefing on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in the player above.
Highlighting the efforts of governments around the world to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Ghebreyesus said more funding for the COVAX act-accelerator vaccines pillar was “urgently needed to move the portfolio forward.”
He said COVAX aimed to deliver 2 billion doses of a safe, viable vaccine by the end of 2021. “There is light at the end of the tunnel. As I said last week, together we can do it,” he said.
Earlier, WHO predicted that the coronavirus crisis can be over in less than two years faster than it took for the 1918 Spanish flu.
More than 22.81 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally since it was first identified in China last year and 793,382 have died.
The Spanish flu was the deadliest pandemic in modern history, killing as many as 50 million people and infected nearly 500 million around the world between February 1918 and April 2020.
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