'Moral catastrophe': Second year of pandemic could be more deadly, says WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged rich countries to review plans to vaccinate children against and instead donate doses to poorer nations, while warning that the second year of the pandemic looks likely to be longer. deadly.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced his criticism of the fact that a number of rich countries are now vaccinating children and adolescents, while poor countries have barely started vaccinating health workers and other more vulnerable by Covid.

Instead of offering vaccines to young and healthy people, these countries should give their doses to the global vaccine distribution scheme, Covax, and thus ensure that those most in need of all countries to receive protection, he said.

"In January, I talked about the possible development of a moral catastrophe. Unfortunately, we are now witnessing this game. In a small part of the rich countries, which bought most of the supply, the lower risk groups are "I understand why some countries want to vaccinate children and adolescents, but now I urge them to reconsider the decision and instead donate vaccines to Covax," he told a news conference.

The WHO hopes that more countries will follow the example of France and Sweden in donating vaccines. Canada and the United States are among the countries that have authorized teen vaccines in recent weeks.

Nearly 1.4 billion doses of the vaccine have been injected into at least 210 territories worldwide, according to an Agence France-Presse count. About 44% of them are administered in high-income countries, making up 16% of the global population.

Faced with this inequality in access to vaccines, Tedros warned that the world will probably see more deaths this year than last year, despite the arrival of vaccines.

"We are in the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first," he said. "Saving lives and livelihoods with a combination of public health measures and vaccination - not one or the other - is the only way out. "

Sources: Guardian, Agence France-Presse