The WHO, on Tuesday, said that there could be a shortage of one to two billion syringes needed to administer COVID-19 vaccines in 2022 and that this could slow down regular immunisation and compromise needly safety.
“We could have a global shortage of immunisation syringes that could, in turn, lead to serious problems such as slowing down immunisation efforts as well as safety concerns,” WHO expert Lisa Hedman told Reuters.
She also said, that compared to 6 billion immunisation syringes manufactured a year, 6.8 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally. Hedman added that unless more factories produce more devices, required for shots, a shortage is inevitable.
The WHO expert also said that a shortage could impact youngsters getting vaccinated, which could impact public health for years to come.
Meanwhile, the heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, WHO and the World Trade Organization held a follow-up session of High-Level Consultations with the CEOs of leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing companies on Tuesday, news.un.org reported.
The meeting's goal was to figure out how to make vaccine distribution more equitable so that vaccines would go to the countries that needed them the most. All participants agreed to collaborate in order to acquire clarification on donations, vaccination swaps, and delivery dates. The CEOs and heads of the four organisations discussed how to best address trade bottlenecks, how to improve the donation process, what additional steps are needed to reach the 40 per cent vaccination target in all countries by the end of the year, and how to improve transparency and data sharing with the IMF-WHO Vaccine Supply Forecast Dashboard and the Multilateral Leaders Task Force.
