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“Shocking disparity” persists in vaccine distribution: WHO chief – Metro US

“Shocking disparity” persists in vaccine distribution: WHO chief

FILE PHOTO: World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends
FILE PHOTO: World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) – There is still a “shocking disparity” in global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.

Tedros, addressing an event of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, said that some low and middle income countries in the COVAX facility still had not received any vaccines, while others had not received their second round allocation. “We need an urgent scale-up in financing COVAX,” he said.

Felix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and chair of the African Union, said he hoped that people on the African continent would have the same access to COVID-19 vaccines as people in Europe and North America.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Michelle Nichols in New York)