GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the first Covid-19 vaccine from China in a bid to boost global immunisation drives.
Many Western countries are starting to reopen as vaccinations gain pace, while authorities in Tokyo and other parts of Japan extended virus states of emergency, less than three months before the Olympics.
In Geneva, the WHO approved for emergency use the Sinopharm vaccine, the first fully non-Western vaccine to get the green light, and build up the global arsenal against the virus.
“The number of cases, the number of deaths globally is on the increase,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. “We will see serious situations like what we see now in India, in Brazil,” he warned.
The WHO has already given emergency use listing to the vaccines being made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and the AstraZeneca jab being produced at separate sites in India and South Korea.
The listing paves the way for countries worldwide to quickly approve and import a vaccine for distribution. It also opens the door for the jabs to enter the Covax global vaccine-sharing scheme, which aims to provide equitable access around the world and particularly in poorer countries.
The Sinopharm vaccine is already in use in 42 territories around the world, fourth behind AstraZeneca (166), Pfizer-BioNTech (94) and Moderna (46), according to an AFP tally.
WHO official Mariangela Simao said the Sinopharm approval “has the potential to rapidly accelerate” access to the vaccine in many other countries.
Many people have shied away from getting the AstraZeneca vaccine after UK and European regulators recorded a very small number of people developing clots with low blood platelet levels.
The WHO has urged governments to refrain from vaccinating children against Covid-19 until the elderly and at-risk worldwide have received the vaccine. The plea came after Canada authorised the use of Pfizer vaccine on children, with other rich nations set to follow suit.
