US to detail global distribution plan for 80 million vaccine doses
San Jose, Costa Rica Reuters The United States will announce in the next two weeks how it plans to distribute 80 million COVID-19 vaccine doses it has pledged globally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. Speaking at a joint news conference with Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado, Blinken said the administration of […]
Put idle capacity to work now making vaccines, says WTO head
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The world cannot act soon enough to put idle manufacturing capacity to work making COVID-19 vaccines to help redress a massive imbalance in global supply, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday. WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments was “both the moral and economic […]
Individual vaccine arrangements undermine fair distribution, WHO head says
Zurich, Switzerland/London, UKReuters The World Health Organization on Thursday urged nations producing COVID-19 vaccines not to distribute them unilaterally but to donate them to the global COVAX scheme to ensure fairness. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the plea as China hashes out agreements across Africa, Russia distributes shots in Latin America and the European […]
WHO vaccine scheme risks failure, leaving poor countries no COVID shots until 2024
Brussels, BelgiumReuters The global scheme to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries faces a “very high” risk of failure, potentially leaving nations home to billions of people with no access to vaccines until as late as 2024, internal documents say. The World Health Organization’s COVAX program is the main global scheme to vaccinate people in […]
G20 leaders pledge to fund fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines – draft statement
Washington DC, USReuters Leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies on Sunday will pledge to pay for a fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and tests around the world so that poorer countries are not left out, and to extend debt relief to them, a draft G20 communique showed. “We will spare no effort to […]