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WHO chief hailed Monday “encouraging” information about Covid-19 vaccines. (File)
Geneva:
The World Health Organization chief hailed Monday “encouraging” information about Covid-19 vaccines however expressed concern about surging circumstances in lots of international locations and insisted that complacency was not an choice.
“We continue to receive encouraging news about COVID-19 vaccines and remain cautiously optimistic about the potential for new tools to start to arrive in the coming months,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus informed a digital press briefing.
But he added: “This is no time for complacency.”
His feedback got here as world hopes of overcoming the coronavirus pandemic have been boosted after a second candidate vaccine was discovered to be almost 95 p.c efficient in an ongoing trial.
The information from the US biotech agency Moderna introduced much-needed optimism to a world dealing with surging infections and gruelling new restrictions.
It got here after comparable outcomes have been introduced final week for a vaccine candidate developed by pharma big Pfizer and its German accomplice BioNTech.
But WHO has warned that widespread availability of any vaccine stays a great distance off, at the same time as Covid-19 circumstances and deaths surge in lots of elements of the world.
“This is a dangerous virus, which can attack every system in the body,” stated Tedros. “Those countries that are letting the virus run unchecked are playing with fire.”
Vaccine alone ‘will not finish pandemic’
Globally, infections have soared previous 54 million with greater than 1.three million deaths, and specialists warning there are nonetheless troublesome and harmful months forward.
“A vaccine on its own will not end the pandemic,” Tedros warned earlier Monday.
During the night press convention, he stated WHO was “extremely concerned by the surge in cases we’re seeing in some countries”.
He voiced explicit alarm concerning the state of affairs in Europe and the Americas, the place well being employees and techniques “are being pushed to the breaking point”.
“Health workers on the frontlines have been stretched for months. They are exhausted,” he warned.
“We must do all we can to protect them, especially during this period when the virus is spiking and patients are filling hospital beds.”
Tedros insisted that international locations had “no excuse for inaction.
“A laissez-faire angle to the virus — not utilizing the total vary of instruments obtainable — results in demise, struggling and hurts livelihoods and economies,” he said.
“It’s not a selection between lives or livelihoods. The quickest option to open up economies is to defeat the virus.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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