Geneva. Officials of the United Nations Organization, finance and others related to vaccines yesterday asked rich countries to donate surplus doses against Covid-19 to the Covax mechanism, of the World Health Organization (WHO), to supply to low- and middle-income nations.
In a global videoconference, Washington Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked in recorded statements that other countries “inject” an additional $ 2 billion into Covax.
“To beat this pandemic, we need to aim for much more (in financial terms). With an additional 2 billion dollars for the Covax mechanism we can reach almost 30 percent of the open population in the countries that need it, instead of 20 percent, ”he indicated in his address for a public broadcast co-sponsored by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance co-administered by Covax.
At the forum, officials requested that the $ 2 billion arrive by June for the program that aims to buy up to 1.8 billion doses in 2021. To date, Covax has shipped more than 38 million doses to 111 countries. .
“The world’s supply is incredibly tight, but we also know that many high-income nations have asked for more vaccines than they need,” said Gavi CEO Seth Berkley, who asked to share the extra doses “as soon as possible to cover the high-risk populations during this critical period ”.
New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden committed new funds to the Covax system.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus claimed that some countries that had signed up for Covax have not received doses, none have gotten enough, and others were not getting the second round on time.
Meanwhile, the WHO called on Denmark to donate the doses of AstraZeneca that it will no longer use and the director of the WHO in Europe, Hans Kluge, stated that the Danish government is examining options to share the referred drugs with the poorest nations, after which stopped the administration of that formula due to concerns about the occurrence of rare cases of blood clots post-vaccination.
The pronouncement came a day after Nobel laureates and former heads of state or government called for a temporary suspension of vaccine patents in a public letter and invited US President Joe Biden to support the initiative.
The suppression of the intellectual property of the immunizer is “a vital and necessary stage to end the pandemic”, consider the 170 signatories of the letter, among them the former presidents of France François Hollande and Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as well as the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Nobel laureates, Muhamad Yunus (peace), Joseph Stiglitz (economics) or Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (medicine).
Humanitarian catastrophe
Doctors Without Borders denounced that Brazil’s chaotic management of the pandemic plunged the country into a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Thousands of deaths could have been avoided if the Brazilian government had adopted an adequate and coordinated response against Covid-19, the civic organization said yesterday. Brazil is the second country with the highest number of deaths (361,884) from Covid-19, behind the United States.
The Globo television network reported cases from a Rio hospital in which patients were intubated while tied to beds in the absence of sedatives.
The United States further increased the immunization distance with much of the rest of the world, because it is close to administering 200 million doses, and will begin to vaccinate homeless people, while the country reported 5,800 people infected after being immunized .
Europe exceeded one million deaths from the virus, and the situation remains “serious” on the continent, with about 1.6 million new cases reported each week, however, the proportion of deaths among people over 80 years of age decreased.
In France, 100,000 deaths were exceeded by Covid-19, while India registered a record of 200,000 new cases in 24 hours.
On a global scale, the pandemic has left 138 million 662 thousand 915 confirmed cases, 2 million 978 thousand 697 deaths and 78.9 million people recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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