WHO urges Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to make good on their commitments

Geneva, Feb 18 (AFP/APP): The World Health Organization on Thursday urged Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to make good on their commitments as the planet’s poorest countries await their first doses.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Covax facility — the global Covid-19 vaccine procurement and distribution effort ensuring poorer countries can access doses — was now ready to begin. Around 336 million AstraZeneca-Oxford doses and 1.2 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses — the only two vaccines with WHO approval — are set to start being shipped out later this month through Covax.

“At the beginning of the year I issued a call to action to ensure that vaccination of health workers was under way in all countries within the first 100 days of the year,” Tedros told a news conference. Friday “marks the half-way point, and we have made progress, but we are not there yet.

“With the emergency use listing of two versions of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week, Covax is ready to roll out vaccines and is waiting for several manufacturers to make good on their commitments,” he said, without elaborating.

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