World Health Organization Should Do More To Help Poor Countries Rather Than Criticize Rich Ones
On 1/21/21 at 6:03 AM EST
Global health experts have warned the race to vaccinate individual populations is futile in the long-term fight against COVID-19 and it s not just an issue of hoarding supplies.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure over the distribution of vaccines across the globe.
Ghebreyesus said the prospects for fairly distributing the various jabs were at serious risk because of a me-first approach taken by some countries, which has left the world s poorest and most vulnerable at risk . He told the opening of the WHO annual executive board meeting: It is self-defeating. Ultimately these actions will only prolong the pandemic.
Is Europe Getting Its COVID Vaccine Rollout Wrong?
On 1/19/21 at 12:51 PM EST
Just days after the Brexit transition period ended at the end of 2020, as the United Kingdom was plunged into an undetermined period of strict national lockdowns, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was keen to deliver some good news - he revealed the U.K. is beating Europe in the global vaccine race.
He said at the time that the nation s ambitious vaccine program had seen more people vaccinated in the U.K. than in the rest of Europe combined and that Britain was now in a sprint in a race against the virus to vaccinate people quicker than COVID is spreading. People around the world are now being vaccinated against COVID-19 thanks to the approval and rollout of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs. But World Health Organization (WHO) statistics show more than 10,000 people are dying across the globe each day too.
January 11, 2021
It’s a miracle of modern medicine that scientists were able to develop multiple successful vaccines against Covid-19, a disease that wasn’t even on their radar a year ago. But so far, the global effort to roll out these vaccines and distribute them to vulnerable people is off to a slow start.
According to a tracker developed by OurWorldInData a research partnership between the University of Oxford and the British non-profit Global Change Data Lab three countries have vaccinated a higher proportion of their populations than the rest of the world: Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain.
Yves here. This post gives a useful compilation of many of the reasons why distribution of the Covid vaccines is proving to be a train wreck.
And in a colossal confirmation that lack of operational competence isn’t unique to one side of the aisle, the press is reporting tonight that Biden has decided to release all the vaccines now, rather than hold half back for the second shot. Since the logjam is in the local distribution, which is nowhere close to being remedied, doubling the amount that goes out the door will guarantee that even more vaccines will become unusable. Recall that the Pfizer vaccine, once it is shipped, can be stored in the shipping boxes with dry ice for only 30 days; it can be held for an additional 5 days at refrigerator temps. I strongly suspect that the vaccine could be stored for much longer in a super-cold freezer. But as readers discussed at length early on, there aren’t many out there and they are way too costly to justify buying enough to help with pea