Live Updates
The World Health Organization held a press briefing Friday to address the spread of COVID-19 and the delta variant, vaccine inequity and how people globally can act to end the pandemic.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general for the WHO, said during the conference that the organization expects global cases of COVID-19 to surpass 200 million within the next two weeks. He stated that the world has all the tools and capability it needs to end the virus, but it “will end when the world chooses to end it.”
Ghebreyesus also spoke about the persistence of vaccine inequity that the WHO began expressing concern about nearly a year ago. Ghebreyesus said that the WHO again warned in November of 2020 that the poorer populations of the world could be “trampled in the stampede of vaccines,” and once more in January of 2021 cautioned that the world was on ‘the verge of a catastrophic moral failure,”
“And yet, the global distribution of vaccines remains unjust,” Ghebreyesus said.
This is especially true in Africa, which has only seen 2% of all the vaccines administered globally. Ghebreyesus described Africa as one of the most at-risk places in the world from the virus, reporting an 80% increase in deaths in over the last four weeks.
Despite the continent being ready to roll out vaccines to the population, it lacks the supplies to do so, he said.
Dr. Michael Ryan, an infectious disease epidemiologist, affirmed that there will be no “magic solutions” to ending COVID-19. Dr. Maria Van Kerkove, another epidemiologist, said that the initiatives global health leaders have been pushing for moths, such as vaccines, wearing masks and testing, remain the keys to battling the pandemic.
The live updates for this event have ended.
Mahmud Turkia/AFP via Getty Images
