In his final speech of the year, World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world has to work together to achieve the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022.
Taking an optimistic note, he said he felt the pandemic would be defeated in 2022, provided countries worked together. He warned against “narrow nationalism and vaccine hoarding”, saying some countries doing this had undermined equity and “created the ideal conditions for the emergence of the Omicron variant”.
“The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of the virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic,” he added.
Tedros has long been against developed nations deploying vaccine booster doses even as developing countries struggle to have enough vaccines to inoculate their citizens.
The World Health Organisation has set a goal of vaccinating 70 per cent of people in all countries by July to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, 49 per cent have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
